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October 14, 2020Read More
By Loren Ludwig
Donald Rumsfeld once opined that it was the “unknown unknowns”—the stuff you don’t know that you don’t know—that make foreign policy so difficult. A similar problem confronts those fascinated by lacunae in Renaissance and baroque polyphonic music—compositions for which one or more polyphonic parts have been lost to the ravages of history. To those seeking to reconstruct missing parts, and thereby render incomplete pieces playable, a primary challenge is figuring out what, exactly, is unknown. Much can be inferred from surviving voices, particularly if the primary structural voices (often including the cantus and tenor) survive. In this current age of COVID-19, several recent online initiatives have appeared that invite musicians to reconstruct missing polyphonic voices of early works—an activity that seems perfect for the legions of performers and music scholars now sheltering in place indoors with no access to physical library collections.
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August 22, 2019Read More
By Michael Talbot
I first came across Francesco Barsanti (ca. 1690–1775) in the early 1960s, when I bought an LP of French horn concertos. I gave him little thought over the next five decades, when my research focused on Albinoni and Vivaldi. But my interest was rekindled when, following my retirement, I began to direct my attention also to music composed in eighteenth-century Britain by Italian immigrants. Barsanti, who lived for most of his working life in England and Scotland, was an ideal composer and musical personality to investigate; he not only integrated himself well into British musical life but also contributed something truly individual to it. His secular vocal music output encompasses four very different genres: the chamber cantata, the Italian madrigal, the French air, and the English catch.
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May 01, 2019Read More
By Jonathan Wainwright
Many years ago, as an undergraduate, I remember finding a couple of articles suggesting that Walter Porter was a pupil of the great Monteverdi, and thinking, “an English composer called Walter who studied with Monteverdi: a bit unlikely?!” As I continued my studies at the Ph.D. level and discovered more about the dissemination and influence of Italian music in England in the first half of the seventeenth century, I learned that Walter Porter didn’t need to go anywhere near Italy in order to study and get to know the most up-to-date Italian styles, and that all Monteverdi’s publications were easily available in London, but, I’m sad to say, my skepticism still shone through. Twenty years later, when editing Walter Porter’s collected works for A-R Editions, I had the opportunity to really get to know Porter’s music, and I’m now slightly embarrassed about my previous skepticism. I can now quite believe that Porter was a pupil of the great Monteverdi!
