SPECIAL INVITATION FROM THE SALTRE-BIGELOW DUO
LORRAINE HOPE SALTRE, Soprano and
JOHN MARSH BIGELOW
Renaissance Lute, Eleven-String Archguitar, Small Harp
All arrangements/adaptations by Saltre/Bigelow
1 -Fantasy - John Dowland (guitar)
2-Come Again, Sweet Love - Dowland (lute/voice)
3-The Fairy Round - A. Holborne (lute) to hear a sample
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4-Ysabel, perdiste la tu faxa- (Ysabel, you have lost your belt) Villancico arr. A. Mudarra (voice/lute)
5-Pavan -Luis de Milan (lute)
6-Fantasia - Francesco da Milano (lute)
7-Tant que vivray - de Sermisy (lute/voice)
8-Gavottes - J.S. Bach - Sixth Cello Suite (guitar)
9-Ave Maria - J.S.Bach-C. Gounod (guitar/voice) to hear a sample
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10-Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - J.S. Bach (guitar) to hear a sample
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11-Standchen (Serenade) - M. Giuliani (guitar/voice)
12-Duo - Ferdinand Carulli (guitar duet)
13-Plaisirs d'amour (Pleasures of Love) Martini (voice/guitar)
14-Polo - Manuel de Falla (guitar/voice)
15-Recuerdos de la Alhambra -F. Tarrega (guitar)
16-Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5 - H. Villalobos (guitar/voice)
17-Ballymure Ballad -Trad'l. Irish ( guitar/voice)
18-Lamentation of the Angular Beast - J. Hartman (guitar)
19-She Moved Through the Fair - Trad'l. Irish ( voice) to hear a sample
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20-Planxty George Brabizon - T. O'Carolan (small harp) to hear a sample
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21-Danny Boy - Traditional (voice/guitar)
22-O'Carolan's Concerto ( guitar duet)
23-Sailor Boy - Trad. English - arr. B. Britten (guitar/voice)
24-Danza - Julian Orbon (guitar)
25-Marguerite, elle est malade (Marguerite, she is ill) arr.Seiber (voice/guitar) to hear a sample
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Musical Program Notes
1 -Fantasy - John Dowland (guitar)
A piece which moves from resolute meditation through gathering urgency to sudden triumph.
to read more about Dowland and this piece click here
2-Come Again, Sweet Love - Dowland (lute/voice)
In this well known Dowlands song a would be lover pleads his plight with Elizabethan double-entendre.
to read more about this song click here
3-The Fairy Round - A. Holborne (lute) to hear a sample
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Sheer fun to play, an eruption of Elizabethan exuberance with bouncy accents and combined meter syncopations.
4-Ysabel, perdiste la tu faxa- (Ysabel, you have lost your belt) Villancico arr. A. Mudarra (voice/lute)
A terse lyric that could mean much more than it says, and a concise but contrapuntally born melody are featured here in this "Village song", originally written for voice and vihuela.
for more about this song and the vihuela, click here
5-Pavan -Luis de Milan (lute)
Also a composed for vihuela, this pavan is imbued with solemn intensity.
for more about Milan and this piece click here
6-Fantasia - Francesco da Milano (lute)
A sunny, joyous temperament is sustained in bouyant counterpoint throughout this lute piece written by a stellar performer of the Age.
for more about this piece click here
7-Tant que vivray - de Sermisy (lute/voice)
"So long as I am living and in the flourishing of my days, I shall serve the god of Love" is the lyric, which receives a setting as straightforward and direct as the unabashed declaration in this song, one very well known in its time.
8-Gavottes - J.S. Bach - Sixth Cello Suite (guitar)
Bach has relaxed his sometimes austere character in these dance movements of country origin, while maintaining the transcendent level of his writing in these well beloved frequently excerpted pieces.
for more about these click here
9-Ave Maria - J.S.Bach-C. Gounod (guitar/voice) to hear a sample
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One of the most deservedly well known conjoinings of compelling structure and heartfelt vocal line of all time are found in this favorite "Ave", for which Gounod adopted Bachs prelude as accompaniment.
10-Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - J.S. Bach (guitar)
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Perhaps Bachs most frequently transcribed work, I have endeavored in my arrangement to be as faithful to the spirit of the original as possible while retaining coherency in rendering this piece for chorus and orchestra onto guitar.
for more about this piece and about its transcription click here
11-Standchen (Serenade) - M. Giuliani (guitar/voice)
This Viennese serenade is given Italianate lyricism by this composer from south of the Alps, one of the foremost of the first generation of modern guitar composers.
for more about this piece and about its composer click here
12-Duo - Ferdinand Carulli (guitar duet)
Carulli does justice to both parts in his guitar duets, giving scope to each, even in this modest but tuneful example.
for more about this piece and about its composer click here
13-Plaisirs d'amour (Pleasures of Love) Martini (voice/guitar)
This early nineteenth century composition has become so well known and disseminated that it is often thought of as a folk song, though usually it is only the chorus that is familiar. The entire version is heard here.
for more about this piece click here
14-Polo - Manuel de Falla (guitar/voice)
"I have a pain in my heart, and no one can gainsay my pain." De Fallas setting of this lyric, one of his siete canciones, is appropriately headlong and urgent. This performance was recorded from the audience at one of our concerts in New York.
15-Recuerdos de la Alhambra -F. Tarrega (guitar)
Less plangent than on a mandolin, more liquid in effect than on bowed strings, tremolo technique on guitar is especially effective for romantic melody as in this piece, easily Tarrega's most well known.
for more about this piece and about the Alhambra click here
16-Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5 - H. Villalobos (guitar/voice)
This passionate paean to the moon and nature, originally for soprano and eight 'cellos but arranged by the composer himself for voice and guitar, has been further adapted in our performance here.
17-Ballymure Ballad -Trad'l. Irish ( guitar/voice)
A traveler pauses in his ambulation along the road (the extra beat in the first measure?) to overhear a lads bragadoccio bargaining for a kiss from his lass from where they linger behind a hay wagon.
18-Lamentation of the Angular Beast - J. Hartman (guitar)
This was originally written by a composer friend of mine for ukelin (nope, not a misspelling) as a memorial piece for a one with whom we were mutually acquainted.
for more about the ukelin and the Angular Beast click here
19-She Moved Through the Fair - Trad'l. Irish ( voice) to hear a sample
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The unaccompanied vocal poignantly renders the bereavement of the lover whose beloveds untimely demise prevents their marriage; the otherworldly effect of the ametric rhythm and the modal key underscores her visitation from beyond.
20-Planxty George Brabizon - T. O'Carolan (small harp) to hear a sample
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Our only recorded harp piece is familiar to anyone well versed in the music of O'Carolan, the past exponent of the Irish harper tradition most prominently recalled today.
for more about "Planxtys" click here
21-Danny Boy - Traditional (voice/guitar)
This most enduring of Irish classics is not the sentimental love song the innattentive casual listener sometimes assumes it to be, it is a bidding of farewell to a son departing for war, from a father who knows he may not live to see his sons return.
22-O'Carolan's Concerto ( guitar duet)
This piece, his nod to the main stream of musical culture, is a favorite among O'Carolan enthusiasts. The accompanying counterpoint is my own.
for more about the harp tradition, O'Carolan, and this piece click here
23-Sailor Boy - Trad. English - arr. B. Britten (guitar/voice) to hear a sample click here *
Brittens highly individual setting is both contemporary and in keeping with the spirit of this rollicking folk song.
24-Danza - Julian Orbon (guitar)
Violent harmonic clashes, jagged syncopations, sharp dynamic juxtapositions combine in this outburst of Cuban enthusiasm.
for more about "Planxtys" click here
25-Marguerite, elle est malade (Marguerite, she is ill) arr.Seiber (voice/guitar) to hear a sample
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The verve is French, here, as Marguerite defies her temporary infirmity and her doctors hopeless expectation that he can convince her to stop partaking of wine- an essential element in the exuberance of living in that land.
Expanded Musical Program Notes
1 -Fantasy - John Dowland (guitar)
The range of character exhibited in a random sampling of Elizabethan lute music would run a gamut from pretty little baubles to pieces born of profound and probing reflection; the fantasies of John Dowland are serious music indeed, even when ebullient in nature, and are representative of the Renaissance lutenist's art at its highest manifestation. This one encapsulates in a single piece a presaging in form and texture the pairing of prelude and fugue characteristic of the Baroque period which followed Dowland's era. Not as long as others of his fantasies, it is large scale more by virtue of the startling distance travelled by Dowland in an economy of measures rather than by sheer length, an aspect of his musical thought wonderfully characterized by a colleague of mine as "like sheet lightning". This performance was recorded on eleven-string guitar instead of lute.
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2-Come Again, Sweet Love - Dowland (lute/voice)
The predicament of the subject who seems in such dire straits in this Dowland classic is often given serious, even somber treatment in standard performances. However, we feel that the subject view point is expressed very much tongue-in-cheek, employing greatly exagerrated mock dismay at his own plight as a strategem in his game of conquest in love, and making much of what at that time was a well-understood metaphor in what it means to "die". Therefore, we prefer a sprightly tempo, an interpretation more in keeping with the major mode Dowland chose and one which brings out more the picturesque quick rhythmic interplay he wrote between the vocal line and the realized lute accompaniment.
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4-Ysabel, perdiste la tu faxa- (Ysabel, you have lost your belt) Villancico arr. A. Mudarra (voice/lute)
The beautifully simple linear melody of this "village song" is given forward momentum by the active and flowingly supportive accompaniment in this setting; it perhaps is not too fanciful to regard this as musically analogous to the visual image of the words, "Ysabel, you have lost your belt, there it goes Swimming along the water, Ysabel so beautiful!" The lyric is terse, brief, anything but voluable, leaving much to the imagination; but the theme of bathing as an image, either simply as an occasion for the expression of appreciation for womanly beauty, or as an opening to amourous interlude is not an unusual one in this repertoire.
The arising of the vocal line in imitative counterpoint from the motive repeatedly entered in the introduction, though a normal compositional device, more poetically might be taken to suggest a recurrence of such encounters between the particular observer and observed in this song; in concert with possible double meaning of the word for that which is lost, "faxa", translated as "belt" but also taken as connoting "outline" (or waistline), together with the association whereby the aqueous element included in the scene frequently signifies the energy of life- perhaps there is a concern here, discreetly unvoiced, for the possibility of a burgeoning presence taking place within the figure of this beautiful young woman.
Is this over-interpretation, fevered imagination bringing too much to bear on this simple song from the Renaissance? The song itself, taciturn, says neither yea nor nay to this, it is left entirely up to the listener to decide.
The original setting is for voice and vihuela, a guitar type instrument used mostly in Spain in a manner comparable to that of the lute elsewhere in Europe during the Rennaissance.
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The earliest vihuela master known to us today is Luis Milan. The bulk of his 1536 publication El Maestro consists of forty fantasias, also included, among other things, are six pavans which are mostly really small- scale fantasias. Though much the societal courtier, in this second of his pavans, Milan musically comes near to evoking the religious intensity of a mass movement by Palestrina or Victoria, whose musical language Milan speaks through his instrument.
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6-Fantasia - Francesco da Milano (lute)
It is possible I may have played this piece more often than any other in my repertoire; it offers such excellent return in performance satisfaction for the technical investment of playing it. Instead of beginning as Milano so often does with a singly stated theme as a basis for subsequent imitations, he commences with the combination of a simple song-like descending line with a supporting bouncy countersubject underneath. This compound texture then weaves its way through a two and three partnered dance to one of Milano's typically satisfying plagal cadences.
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8-Gavottes - J.S. Bach - Sixth Cello Suite (guitar)
Bach is usually thought of as a purely abstract composer but this pair of Gavottes seem deliberately contrived to conjure up images of rustic peasant revelry, especially in the second one with its evocation of a grinding hurdy-gurdy drone accompaniment. My transcription and arrangement of these from the four strings of the cello to the eleven strings of my classical guitar places them in the key of D rather than E as is the usual treatment on six string.
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10-Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - J.S. Bach (guitar)
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This famous and favorite chorale setting from Bach's 147th Cantata may well be the work of his availed of most often by the general community of instrumentalists and ensembles for transcription or rearrangement. Especially in regard to transcription to a singular medium, be it piano, guitar, harp, hammered dulcimer, even solo violin or cello, etc., the frequency of this access is carried on in spite of the problems presented in rendering a whole or complete arrangement, which sufficiently incorporates complexities of inner voicings, and which adequately registers the distinction between elements which the ear finds easily separable from each other in the original orchestration. Flatly stated, this chorale setting does not lend itself as gratefully to such transcription as do pieces made to travel less distance in the conversion of medium; that this is nevertheless so often done simply underscores how well loved it is- everyone wants to play this piece, and will find a ready and receptive audience for it when they do.
It is inevitable that in order for the result to lie easily within perceived parameters of the natural character of an instrument to which a transcription is made, that there is a plethora of "transcriptions" of the Jesu which honorably attempt no more than to present excized and fragmented portions of what Bach wrote. Alternatively, the philosophy behind more ambitious transcriptions is to arrive at something which benefits from ones impressions being informed by thoughts of the original, not necessarily to be plausible throughout as wholly endemic to the instrument without exceeding in concept its character.
In either case, that such transcriptions partially derive their merit from looking back in homage to the original in addition to the opportunity they provide for presentiment of an instrument's and performer's capabilities does not detract from the worthiness of the exercize or the aesthetic validity of the results; the success of such transcriptions is a testament to the durability of Bachs musical conception.
Among the transcriptional challenges alluded to above is that in his original setting, the simple chorale melody as given to the chorus steps forward and identifies itself plainly as the thematic basis of the orchestral obbligato filagree by which it is preceded and in which it is embedded; it is easy to distinguish the vocal and instrumental parts from each other as they intertwine through the same register. This can become confusing when these separate parts are jointly rendered to the same instrumental quality; therefore the chorale tune is sometimes left to stand alone at these points. In my transcription, rather than simply casting aside and foregoing the obbligato during statements of the chorale theme, I have relegated the tune and accompaniment alternately to different octaves during the first two statements. This establishes a precedent whereby the conjoining of the two in the same octave is clarified in the continuation.
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11-Standchen (Serenade) - M. Giuliani (guitar/voice)
While his beloved is sleeping in her chamber, she is serenaded by her lover.
The Italian guitarist and composer Mauro Giuliani was one of the most widely known and lauded performers of his day, so much so that the first journal for guitarists, even though not launched until after his death, and originating neither in his native land nor his adopted Vienna, was named after him, the English publication "The Giulianiad."
His use of the "standchen" or serenade style of composers of Austrian and Germanic origina is clearly borrowed but with an added affect of lyricism in the melodic vocal line quite familiar to lovers of Italian music.
The song describes a serenade by a lover from beneath the beloved's window where he tells his lute to play softly so as not to disturb her sleep, and instead to enter her dreams with thoughts of him. The accompaniment is flowing and caresses the lyricism of the vocal line giving an overall dreamlike effect, most soothing to the listener.
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12-Duo - Ferdinand Carulli (guitar duet)
Of the same generation and country of origin as Giuliani, Carulli found his career in Paris, and as a prolific composer became one of the first to establish the guitar into society there, both as a solo and chamber ensemble instrument. Aside from student pieces many of his lasting contributions to the guitar repertoire have been in ensemble music, including many guitar duets. In these, the second guitar part usually does play a decidedly supporting role, but rather than relegating it only to the most rudimentary of accompaniments as in some of his contemporaries' works, Carulli allows it to share much of the interest, both in contributing equivalently with the first part to the overall texture and in occasional solo forays.
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15-Recuerdos de la Alhambra -F. Tarrega (guitar)
The texture in which long note values of a melody are rendered as their sum equivalent in a stream of reiterated 32nd or 64th notes is called tremolo, as is the right hand technique used for producing the effect. I doubt if there is any guitarist who does not think first of this piece, no matter which they may actually favor, when tremolo is mentioned, either in the context of likely studies for learning the technique or as concert worthy repertoire in which the texture figures prominently. It is a composition well deserving of the continuous attention it has received whereby it has attained to the status of a "warhorse" of the repertoire; that there are those whose reaction to this status is to dismiss it, does not seem to have dissuaded either the legions who are motivated particularly by this piece to learn the technique or the concert virtuosi who still record and perform it in concert, let alone the public who receives it with such affection.
The title means "memories..." or "recollections of the Alhambra", which is usually thought to be in reference to the Alhambra palace in Granada, a pinnacle achievement in Moorish architecture, for the beauty of which there is a saying, that there could be no worse fate than to be blind in Granada. There have been recent claims that Tarrega's actual recollections in fact were of a theater by that name in connection with an affair that he had had. Interesting- but who knows for sure? Whatever were Tarrega's own ideas, to those not party to the affair, the languid melodic pace and the murmuring tremolo certainly are fittingly evocative of the Alhambra palace's fountains, and the water which runs under the walkways to keep them cool in the hot afternoon sun; the long rise and fall of the melodic gestures paralleled in thirds below, along with the inexorable regularity of the harmonic support, appropriately recall the ornate moorish arches and columns. That I am moved to write so of a place which I have seen only in pictures and not been fortunate enough to have visited in person, bespeaks the power of its impression, even if conveyed secondarily, and of the reinforcement to the image delivered by what is likely Tarrega's most famous composition. This is one of the earliest recordings on this collection, done in a recording studio near Amsterdam during my first trip to Europe with my wife. You can hear the occasional receding "swish" of the digital delay the engineer used in lieu of true digital reverb, a technology not as prevalently available then as it is now.
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18-Lamentation of the Angular Beast - J. Hartman (guitar)
I am acquainted with the composer of this piece, as a contemporary from my school days and a dear friend, though he has since relocated to a different locale and we all too rarely correspond. At one time in our lives we worked together as nightwatchmen at the Gardner Museum in Boston, where we were jointly acquainted with the director's small highland terrier, named Angus. Occasionally during the night the director, from his residential quarters on the top floor, would send Angus down in the elevator to where was located our watch station, where we would tease him some with bits of our lunch before allowing them to him. He resembled more than anything else a rolled up bit of dirty gray shag carpet, at one end of which could be discerned with difficulty his obscured but amiable canine countenenance; he used to twitch and snuffle his way right next to us in a most annoying fashion through his post-prandial somnolance, and he had as his paramour a half-inflated basketball to which, much like the story of Heloise and Abelard (which is in keeping with the Medieval provenence of much of the museum's exhibit) , he remained true and loyal, even through their enforced separation, and in spite of his having been deprived of the capability of bestowing upon it his fully competent attentions. We affectionately referred to him as the Angular Beast.
My friend Jim heard on the radio one day a performance on an instrument which he once told me made him think of a strung up garbage can; being an accomplished musician with a taste for eccentrica, he immediately became emamoured of the instrument and had to have one. It turned out to be an instrument competitively marketed by a couple of different companies early in the twentieth century; you would have either a "pianolin" or "ukelin", depending on which company's salesman came first to your door. The instrument featured metal strings, some of which were plucked to provide a bass and chordal accompaniment, while the melodic strings were individually played by a bow, which was guided to the appropriate string by skipping around in an awkward fashion to points between small adjacently situated metallic loops, like miniature croquet hoops, which delivered the bow to one end- extreme end- of the sounding length of the string- hence the aluminated sound.
The intersection of the two accountings related above, of odd instrument and appealing individual, arose when poor Angus met his demise through the agency of an unanticipated encounter with a truck during a midnight stroll. There is, in the Scottish fiddle tradition, a venerable practice of writing memorial pieces for distinguished personages who have passed on, much like Baroque Tombeaux or "Tomb" pieces. These were Lamentations, usually entitled "the Lamentation 'of' ...", rather than "...for...", whomever was the esteemed departed citizen.
In deference to Angus' Scottish heritage, and having previously secured and actually learned to play his pianolin, or ukelin, Jim felt that it befell to him the responsibility of writing, for that instrument, Angus' Lamentation; the nobly conceived and ably executed result is what, with almost no necessitated transcriptional adjustment, I am honored to present here on eleven-string guitar. Jim had thought his labours were being extended at least partly in jest as he was writing this, but the subconscious will have its way- upon hearing this recording of my interpretation, he said that he had had no idea that he had written such a profound piece.
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20-Planxty George Brabizon - T. O'Carolan (small harp)
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O'Carolan's tunes were written for harp, and this one is the only tune which I have ever learned and recorded on that instrument,
According to highly speculative accounts that I've read, the word "planxty" began with O'Carolan, reputedly the only composer to have written pieces called by that term, though he may have had less to do with its use in publication than did later editors of his music. Its been suggested that it is a term cofounded both on the Latin planxtum, a conjugation of plangere, meaning to strike, making a metallic or plaintive sound, and the on the Irish word planncaim, meaning to "strike", as in "striking a harp". Alternatively, it has been supposed a corruption of "slainte", the Irish "good health" used in toasts.
As dedicatory pieces, the form of entitlement is always "Planxty- (someone's name)", the name likely some patron of O'Carolan's. Favoring the first of the above theories, then, if "planxty" essentially means to "play (the harp)", I like then to think that these may be the first character-portraits in music, as such titles might be interpreted to mean " 'playing' Sir George Brabizon," to use the example recorded here, or " 'playing' Sir Festus Burke," or Charles Coote, or whomever was the dedicatee.
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22-O'Carolan's Concerto ( guitar duet)
The harp was so inextricably associated with independent Irish culture that the English, during periods of excessive occupational repression prior to O'Carolan's, felt compelled to outlaw its use; many were the harpers hanged simply for pursuing their profession, accused of carrying hidden messages in their music and spying for the rebels in their journeys. The tradition was nevertheless stubbornly adhered to and proved durable enough to last until and beyond Turloch O'Carolan's lifetime, which was more or less equitably distributed in years to either side of the turn of the 18th century. He is today the best known figure, if not the purest representative, of that centuries long tradition. Though operating in a cultural stream which had been marginalized by the rest of the western society, he was aware of and influenced by the musical practices of the continent, whereby he was able to meet the Italian composer Geminiani and impress him with his extemporization of "O'Carolans's Concerto" recorded here.
O'Carolan's music was notated only as a single melodic line; I have taken the liberty of writing a counterpoint as second part which though accompanying in nature is texturally equivalent. This accompaniment is heard as guitar in the recording; O'Carolan's original melody was recorded on guitar at half tempo, which recording was then was played back at double speed for accompanying, which brought the tempo back to the intended lively pace while raising the pitch up an octave. The resulting mandolin like sound seems appropriate to the Italianate construction of O'Carolan's line.
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24 - Danza ( from "Preludio y danza"), Julian Orbon (six string guitar)
This recording is one of the earliest of this collection; unfortunately the section of tape with the "preludio" is not available. I nevertheless could not resist including this "Danza", not only because of the piece's own appeal, with its spicy dissonances and jagged accents, but also because it exudes an optimistic Cuban vitality which I fondly recall as so characteristic of the composer himself. My wife and I were most fortunate to have formed a friendship with him when I discovered, after having learned the piece, that he was well acquainted with older members of my family. He subsequently was instrumental in our securing an engagement to perform at the Spanish Institute in New York City, for which concert I programmed this piece, and on several of our trips to New York, we were privileged to spend afternoons with Julian during which, to illustrate his conversational points in discussions of music history, he was wont to leap to the piano, which he played with the same wild verve he imbued into this composition.
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