Format: CD
Barcode: 0635212075722
Releasedate: 02-06-23
- There are very few recordings of lyra viol music at all, and only one devoted to Ferrabosco’s work that I know of.
- There are very few recordings of Ferrabosco’s music in general, which is strange in that he was one of the most important composers of his time.
- The music - and my recording - is divided into three sections, being the three different tunings used. The defining feature of lyra viol music is that it allows - requires, even - the instrument to be tuned in many different ways; and thus it needs to be read from tablature: 6 lines representing the 6 strings, and letters on the lines showing which fret is to be stopped. So the player doesn’t need to know what note or pitch s/he is playing, merely where to put the fingers.
Alfonso Ferrabosco, born in Greenwich to an Italian composer father of the same name, was the pre-eminent viol player of the early 17th century, and his lyra viol publication mostly for solo viol is the largest, most important & technically challenging publication for viol for nearly a century.
It was published in the same year at the Shakespeare Sonnets, and may share a dedicatee, in Henry Wriothsley, Earl of Southampton. Ferrabosco worked extensively with Ben Jonson on his plays and masks, in some of which Shakespeare acted.
The lyra viol was an English invention of only a few year before this work, and it had become bit of a craze, with many works published in the first 15 years of the century.
It’s first referred to in a play by Ben Jonson in 1599, Cynthia’s Revels, and at this time probably had sympathetic metal strings running underneath the bridge and through a hollow fingerboard.
Lyra-viol music is really the beginning of the journey that ends in the Bach suites for ‘cello and violin.
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1Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsPrelude 201:10
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2Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsAlmaine – Coranto I04:44
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3Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsGalliard – Coranto II04:23
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4Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsAlmaine – Coranto II04:35
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5Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsGalliard – Coranto II04:16
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6Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsPrelude 300:49
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7Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsAlmaine – Coranto III06:14
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8Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsGalliard – Coranto III03:47
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9Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsAlmaine – Coranto IV05:19
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10Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsPrelude 101:00
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11Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsGalliard – Coranto IV05:20
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12Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsAlmaine – Coranto V05:56
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13Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 ViolsPavan – Coranto06:13