3 Instrumental Pieces from Durham

for 6 instruments.

Durham Cathedral Library MS M193/1 was once in the collection of one Edward Finch (1664-1738), prebendary of York Minster. It passed, on his death, into the hands of the Sharp family of Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, and thence in 1958 to the library of Durham Cathedral on permanent loan. Its contents include mainly eighteenth-century sonatas and also some late- seventeenth-century songs and catches, but its most puzzling feature is a single sheet of paper, of a different type and size from the rest of the volume, bound inside the front cover, upon which are written, in score and in a strange hand, five six-part dances. From their style they would appear to date from the first quarter of the seventeenth century, though they were almost certainly copied much later. Their rather off-beat location, and the fact that the Durham music manuscripts have only recently been catalogued, may explain why these pieces have so far been overlooked by editors and performers. They are not known from any other source.
In the present edition the original note values have been retained, but the barring modernized. Accidentals printed above the stave are editorial.
Our source gives us no clue as to the intended instrumentation of these pieces, but the relative simplicity and narrow range of the parts makes them suitable for most Renaissance ensemble instruments. Consorts of viols or recorders seem to have been popular among seventeenth-century amateurs, as was also the "broken" or "English" consort, for which the inner parts could be adapted for plucked stringed instruments. Since these pieces also work so well on 'loud" wind instruments it is worth noting that cornetts, sackbuts, curtals and shawrns were all played by the professional wind bands of the time, and that a particularly successful way of integrating a cornett into the shawm band where the two top parts are of approximately equal range (as in the present Allmayne and Gallyard) is to have the top line played on a soprano shawm. and the second played on the less strident cornetto, so as to avoid obscuring the tune when the parts cross. The figures in the bass fine of Allens Gallyard are in the source - continuo instruments can equally be added to all three pieces.

Produkt-ID: LPM-EML136

Lieferbar in 3-5 Werktagen

5,20 EUR

inkl. 7% MwSt.
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