Ferrabosco: Consort Music to the viols

Savall, Jordi;
Hesperion XXI

AV 9832

Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger was born around 1575, and died in 1628. His father, who died in 1588, was Italian, but had travelled through the England of Queen Elizabeth I “like a meteor, vivid, with a glittering wake.” He inspired William Byrd, left behind a gentleman’s servant stabbed to death, and also left behind him an apparently sizeable number of illegitimate children. A bit of a cad, it seems, and Queen Elizabeth was not amused. The younger Alfonso grew up in England, and seems to have blended his father’s Italianate skills and an innate musicality into an original English baroque style. He was probably the first to write vocal monodies, and his published songs were the first to bring poetry by Ben Jonson and John Donne to print. Ferrabosco the Younger transformed chamber music, which had been languishing under English composers far from their European influences, and his fantasias for viols was hugely innovative and virtually unique for the time and in its style. Later composers like Purcell followed in his footsteps in his four-part writing.

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

Alia Vox

04-12-2007

7619986098326