ALC 0135 Darkness & Light

1611, an emblematic date in the history of the lute repertoire: in fact, in this year, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger's Primo libro d'intavolatura di Lauto and Robert Ballard's Premier livre de luth came out in print. Kapsberger as well as Ballard, could justifiably be regarded as the offspring initiators of a more modern form of Suite, if we consider the pre-existing Renaissance forms, namely Pavana - Saltarello - Piva or Pavana - Saltarello of the early composer-lyricists as the earliest precursors of the genre. In the above-mentioned tablatures, one constantly finds an improvisational form (Toccata in Kapsberger, Entrée de Luth in Ballard) coupled with two dance forms: Gagliarda and Corrente in Kapsberger, Ballet, Courante and una sola Volte in Ballard. Nevertheless, the two authors proposed here present some peculiar differences in musical writing. Kapsberger shows a dual nature in the writing of the Toccatas: on the one hand presumably improvisational in the fast virtuosic runs contrasted with stretches of elevated and fine contrapuntal workmanship, also present at times in the dances; Ballard more linear-harmonic, inserted in a 'French' tradition of courtly elegance centred mainly on the dualism of the melody-bass lines. Referring to the title of this recording, we could compare Kapsberger to a painter like Caravaggio (shadow-light contrasts...): the use of harmonic-melodic formulas recalling precise 'rhetorical places' refers to an expressiveness made of contrasts: sudden bursts of energy, followed or preceded by relaxed moments of stillness. Ballard on the other hand appears more restrained, more 'courteous'; we could, to continue the comparison with a different art, compare him to the portraiture of a Poussin.