Alessandro PICCININI / Francesca Torelli
Libro secondo di intavolatura di liuto (Bologna, 1639) e manoscritto per tiorba di Modena



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Alessandro PICCININI

(1566-1639)

Libro secondo di intavolatura di liuto (Bologna, 1639)
e manoscritto per tiorba conservato presso l’Archivio di Stato di Modena


liuto
01 - Toccata III   [1:24]
02 - Corrente IV   [1:57]

chitarrone
03 - Battaglia   [6:04]

liuto
04 - Toccata VI   [2:27]
05 - Corrente VIII   [1:29]
06 - Gagliarda III   [1:44]

chitarrone
07 - Aria di Fiorenza   [3:14]
08 - Corrente I   [1:10]
09 - Corrente VI   [1:25]
10 - Gagliarda II   [1:47]

liuto
11 - Ricercar I   [1:56]
12 - Sarabanda alla francese   [2:33]
13 - Corrente I senza canto   [1:29]
14 - Corrente IX   [1:27]
15 - Passacagli   [4:18]

chitarrone
16 - Corrente IV   [1:26]
17 - Gagliarda I   [1:38]

liuto
18 - Toccata VIII   [1:31]
19 - Corrente II   [1:33]
20 - Corrente VII   [1:28]
21 - Gagliarda IV   [2:20]

chitarrone
22 - Calasone   [1:33]

liuto
23 - Bergamasco   [5:23]
24 - Ciaccona Mariona   [4:51]

chitarrone
25 - Ciaccona   [2:45]


Francesca Torelli, liuto & chitarrone





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ALESSANDRO PICCININI

Alessandro Piccinini descended from a family of lutenists. He was born in 1566 in Bologna, a city with a rich history of players of plucked stringed instruments dating back to long before the musician's birth and continuing until at least the late eighteenth century. In addition, the local builders of these instruments were famous throughout Italy and abroad. Piccinini is perhaps the only lutenist to have truly emerged from this tradition of plucked instruments, thanks to his legacy of two large volumes of compositions of incomparable beauty (the second of which was published posthumously).

Of great importance is also the introductory section whose 33 chapters constitute an authentic tutor for playing the lute, including basic indications regarding performance practice ("Playing loud and soft", "How to play arpeggios", etc.) and organology. His first volume of 1623 is prefaced by a lengthy series of 33 notes addressed 'to scholars' and being an authentic tutor for playing the lute, including basic indications regarding performance practice and interpretations. Paradoxically, Piccinini is better known to today's musicians for these notes than for his music, which has only recently been featured in concerts and on record, and been the object of musicological studies.

Let us briefly recall the composer's life. In 1582 the Piccinini family moved from Bologna to Ferrara. There, in the service of Alfonso II, they became part of a flourishing musical circle which enjoyed the stimulating presence of important figures — both residents and visitors to the court The Piccininis (the father and three sons who played the lute) remained in Ferrara until 1597, the year of the duke's death. The city then became part of the Papal States and Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini took over the powers and duties of the duke, which included the rehiring of the Piccinini brothers. Alessandro then moved to Rome in the service of the cardinal. In 1600, he almost certainly travelled to France in the retinue of Aldobrandini, and this helps to explain the influence of the French style on Piccinini's dances, and particularly his 'correnti'. In 1611, Alessandro returned to his native Bologna where he remained, dedicating himself to composing and teaching the lute, as well as taking charge of the family's possessions (an activity which is amply documented). Piccinini died around 1638. It is unknown whether he continued performing on the lute until his death, for testimony of his playing and vast praise from his contemporaries date only until his period in Rome.

The music chosen for these records is drawn from several sources: both books of intabulations for the lute from 1623 and 1639 and the manuscript for theorbo preserved in the Archivio di Stato of Modena, datable to the first decades of the seventeenth century. For quite some time information regarding the origins of the 1623 collection has been based on a letter of that year by Alessandro himself. In it he urged the cardinal d'Este of Modena to intervene on behalf of this first book of intabulations, the publication of which had been interrupted by the death of the printer. An unpublished letter from the previous year, however, reveals a working relationship between the same cardinal, in the role of teacher, and a young unnamed lutenist. And still earlier, in 1614, Alessandro confided to the marquis Bentivoglio his intention of printing a book of music: "I have begun an undertaking, namely to have engraved a book (of music) to be played on the lute which I already began to write in Rome; it will be quite an expense to print, but I have no doubt that I shall earn from it."

The 1623 collection, as well as the other sources, includes the forms of instrumental music most often used in the first decades of the seventeenth century by professional musicians: above all toccate, correnti and gagliarde, forms thoroughly developed and enlivened by masters of the keyboard such as Frescobaldi and the Neapolitans, by harpists, and by lutenists such as Johann Kapsberger (1580-1651) and Pietro Melii (fl. 1612-1620). The style of Piccinini seems in comparison to be somewhat conservative, and one often has the impression that many of the compositions perhaps date back to earlier decades, although presented here in a revised version. The composer's expertise is revealed in pieces such as chromatic toccatas and in partite 'variate' - an homage to the Roman (and Neapolitan) styles most in vogue in those years.

The role played by Alessandro in the creation of the new 'long-bodied' lutes (di corpo longo), the first experimental models of which were built around 1594-96 in Venetian workshops for Duke Alfonso II, is in fact well noted. As Orlando Cristoforetti has correctly pointed out, Alessandro never boasted of having invented the theorbo or the chitarrone (which seems instead to have originated at the Florentine courts), but only of having first come up with the idea of lengthening the neck for low strings, thus transforming the lute into an 'arch-lute' and leading somehow to a similar configurations in the chitarrone (which is distinguished by having the first two strings tuned an octave lower than those of the lute).

The 1639 volume is entirely intended for the lute or archlute and was edited by Alessandro's son, Leonardo Maria, who added a few of his own compositions. The music contained herein was not often performed (the book is full of printing errors and is graphically less clear than its predecessor). Yet this volume (on CD 2) includes the pieces which are more strongly characteristic of Piccinini, such as the Ciaconna (track 24) and Passacaglia (track 15) presented here. Many of these pieces have been recorded here for the first time. The Toccate express an improvisatory style, but this does not necessarily mean that they were in fact improvised. Rather, they were intended to give the listener the impression of free and unbridled artistic expression, vivid and immediate. In order to obtain this style, the composer indeed employs certain ideas typical of unwritten music, but he elaborates them in a carefully thought-out and complex manner. For example, a distinctive characteristic of much improvised music might consist of long initial chords which serve to establish a tonal centre, if not an actual key, and provide a moment of reflection while the player considers how to proceed. Another trait is the use of scales, or partial scales, which at times succeed one another and elsewhere seem to wander about. Piccinini utilizes them and brilliantly leads them back to certain pivotal points in his compositions.

The manuscript from Modena contains 15 pieces by Piccinini, 8 by Kapsberger and 5 by anonymous composers. Yet certain compositional techniques, above all rhythmic, are to a certain extent common to all the works. The compositions are of the finest quality, and indeed those by Kapsberger are assumed to have belonged to his prints which are no longer extant. Of those pieces by Piccinini for theorbo contained in the Modena manuscript and recorded here, the Battaglia (track 3) is particularly worth mentioning. Many composers of the 16th and 17th centuries tried their hand at this genre. In almost all cases, they were designed to evoke the sounds of the battlefield at the time: trumpet calls, drum rolls, the noisy din, and even the folksongs sung by nostalgic soldiers. Lutenists employed specific compositional devices to render this effect: intervals which reproduce the harmonics of the natural trumpet; notes and chords rhythmically repeated numerous times; piano and forte indications or echo effects which seem to symbolize the two armies now standing at a distance, now clashing with each other, now retreating...

The Ciacconna (track 25) for theorbo is anonymous, but an attribution to Piccinini is a plausible hypothesis. I have inserted this piece because of its remarkable rhythmic interest.

Francesca Torelli and Dinko Fabris
(Translation: Candace Smith)



compilado junto con el Libro Primo en interpretación de Luciano Còntini en Brilliant Classics 93353
(las notas están tomadas del libreto de esta edición)

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