TRANSCRIPTIONS FOR LUTE • Evangelina Mascardi, Frédéric Zigante, Cornelia Demmer (lt) • MUSIQUE EN WALLONIE 2305 (61:52)

Music of ANONYMOUS, BESARD, DOWLAND, FERRABOSCO, V. GALILEI, LASSUS, MASCHERA, TERZI

During the 16th century, instrumental music began to develop. Vocal music, both sacred and secular, was intabulated, or transcribed for lute. Transcriptions for keyboard instruments were also made. By means of these publications, some of the most important works became much more widely known. Today these instrumental arrangements are being recorded, no longer just to popularize the music but to broaden the availability of music for the lute and other instruments.

Despite his name appearing alone on the cover, Roland de Lassus composed only eight of the 23 works on this program. Vincenzo Galilei is credited with three tracks and Giovanni Terzi with three; four other composers are given one track each, and five tracks are anonymous. The Lassus examples are secular songs except for one motet, Veni in hortum meum of 1562. We have heard several previous collections of instrumental transcriptions. Our colleague Mortimer H. Frank of long ago wrote about Italian music in Fanfare 7:1.

Mascardi is the principal lutenist here with 14 solo transcriptions; the other nine tracks add one or both of the other players. She is in the Fanfare Archive playing lute, theorbo, and cello on three CDs, one for each instrument. This disc has two reasons to recommend it: for the fine performances, especially of Mascardi as soloist, and for a demonstration of some lute intabulations that were published in the 16th century. Not being a lutenist, I find the program, fine as it is, no match for the music as originally composed. I can recommend it to lovers of instrumental music, but I prefer the version of Veni in hortum meum in Andrew Nethsingha’s excellent collection of sacred music (35:1). You may like this disc for your own reasons.