Lucie Skeaping looks at the life and music of John Wilbye, who spent the majority of his career in the service of the Cornwallis family of Hengrave Hall in his home county of Suffolk.
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Good to hear some of my favourites, and learn a bit more about the man and his life. However I do have a slight niggle, which is that using performances from several different groups 'back to back' in this repertoire made for differences in pitch and style that I found took a few bars to adjust to. Presumably inevitable given less choice of recordings? -
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And how. Painful. I suppose it was interesting to have what are now 'historic' performances (e.g.from The Deller Consort) but OMG, that wobble!using performances from several different groups 'back to back' in this repertoire made for differences in pitch and style that I found took a few bars to adjust to.
Emglish madrigals...however much they owed to Italian models....have been somewhat out of favour. This was possible down to Kingsley Amis. Discuss. However I've always loved them; and I think as students we were among the first to sing them in the era between wobble and Kirkby, if you get my drift. There was an even worse group called The Golden Age Singers...of which my singing teacher was a member....but I suppose one must respect them for their revival of Tudor and Jacobean music.
Madrigals are usually seen as a OVPP medium, but I thought the example from The Cambridge Singers (i.e. a small ensemble) was just lovely. At school (in the 1950s) we had a madrigal choir run by an enthusiastic member of staff who was not part of the music dept. We had a great time, though I dread to think how awful it must have sounded. It had trebles on top.
Anyone got happy madrigal experiences?Comment
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We had a madrigal competition in my last year at school (1964). I led my group of four. I was happy but we didn't win. Thy Wilbye done.Originally posted by ardcarp View PostComment
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I went off them when I discovered Renaissance sacred music. Life is too short.Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
But I do have a soft spot for just a few, and Wilbye's Sweet honey-sucking Bees and Adieu, sweet Amaryllis are among them, as is Draw on, sweet Night which I don't think she played today.Comment
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I think the sheer craft of the Engish madrigalists is under-rated. One of my recent gigs was as one of an eight voice consort singing English part-songs at a West Country 'stately home'. The second half was entirely madrigals, some favourites and others less well-knowm. If we played to the gallery a bit maybe we could be excused because the audience loved it, and they weren't all middle-aged/middle class. Afterwards, we (the performers) felt a real buzz at having been able to communicate the passionate, the profound, the sad, the happy, the frivolous....a whole gamut of feelings and emotions....in these exquisitely wrought pieces.Comment
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Soon after discovering English madrigals when I was about 30, I formed a five voice consort. Our repertoire was mainly light stuff, but we soon began to include some of the more popular madrigals by such as Morley, Bennet and Gibbons. They always went down well with audiences. I have sung madrigals OVPP regularly with my own groups ever since. A Wilbye favourite of mine is the 6 voice setting of 'Lady, when I behold'.
It's a shame that the flowering of the English madrigal was so brief. So many composers published only a book or two. I particularly recommend the five- and six-voice examples by John Ward, whose solitary book was splendidly recorded by the Consort of Musicke (Australian Eloquence).Comment
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