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It’s easy to imagine the peripatetic Italian guitarist and composer Francesco Corbetta (c1615-1681) cheerfully plucking and strumming his way through Italy, France and England, simultaneously absorbing and transforming local musical styles as he goes. But this gorgeous new recording from Baroque guitarist Simone Vallerotonda’s ensemble I Bassifondi, supplemented by the talents of lutenist and guitarist Bor Zuljan and three vocalists, hints at the complexity of a man for whom the guitar was the still point of his turning world.
Like many listeners, I’m more accustomed to hearing Corbetta’s works through the medium of soloists such as William Carter and Jakob Lindberg. It’s as though the textures – struck, brushed or delicately plucked – of Corbetta’s deceptively modest compositions for one guitar are already perfect distillations of his restless temperament. Yet not only is Corbetta’s bare alfabeto notation capable of endless improvisatory elaboration; in the music for two or more plucked instruments and continuo, and in the songs, there is room for percussion, not to mention dancers.
This is the colourful imaginary theatre into which I Bassifondi welcome us. From solo guitar through solo and ensemble songs to ensembles featuring Baroque guitar, theorbo, colascione chitarra battente and percussion including castanets, tambourine and drum, here is the courtly Corbetta favoured by Charles II and Louis XIV, the brash Corbetta reaching back to the guitar’s Spanish roots, the introspective Corbetta of elegy and the intellect.
What is most striking about these marvellous performances is whether it’s a folie for solo guitar, a passacagli for chitarra battente and percussion, any one of a number of sarabandes for two guitars and continuo or the lively Mantovana or Gigue cherie du Roy, there’s a real sense of a relaxed, even jazzy leaning into not just the music’s but the plucked string’s poignantly evanescent quality. William Yeoman |
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