Narvaez: Canción del Emperador (sobre "Mille Regretz" de Josquin des Prez)

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This comprehensive collection includes works for two guitars, solo guitar, flute and guitar and violin and guitar.

The Spanish vihuela has taken a special place in the music of the 16th century. It is a cosmos of its very own, or rather a comet which blazed across the sky at about 1500 and soon after 1560/70 ceased to glow, not finding a real successor. It is courtly art – as such intended to please and delight to the listener – and by all means on a par with Spanish organ music in its compositional quality and earnestness.

If it admits influences from abroad then only from the pinnacles of European music, works from Josquin, Richafort and other internally renowned composer of that time. The composers of the villancicos, fantasias, recercadas, canciones and, above all, the diferencias (formerly a novelty in Europe: the variation) were typical expressions of the Renaissance. They were educated, often engaged in various areas of artwork, for example, the poet Juan de Encina, or Luis de Milán who emulating the Italian role model of Castiglione wrote a book about the courtier, which dealt with the virtues distinguishing the nobleman at court. They were poetical composers of wonderful songs and, at the same time, austere counterpointers who elaborated congenially simple polyphonies which, however, particular for this reason touch us so strongly.

To them, vocals and the vihuela belonged together. This is obvious in their efforts to merge with the succession of mythological vocalists. For example, the frontispiece of “El Maestro” (Valencia 1535) by Luis de Milán displays a representation of Orpheus as a singer who naturally plays the vihuela. Or Luis de Narváez has the image of the singer Arion precede his work “Los seys libros de Delfin” (Valladolid 1538), showinghow Arion is rescued from distress at sea by the dolphins he had summoned with his chant (which, of course, is accompanied by the vihuela). Hence the canciones and vilancicos accompanied by the vihuela certainly are the vihuela’s most significant contribution to the history of Spanish music.

There is no question of José Miguel Moreno being anything other than the leading Spanish specialist in historical plucked string instruments. As a concert performer, researcher, builder and collector of instruments and co-founder of the Glossa label, Moreno has, over the last 30 years, been the guiding beacon for a number of succeeding generations of guitarists and lutenists the world over. Glossa was the label for which he recorded two of his now legendary programmes, La Guitarra Española (1536-1836) and La Guitarra Española (1818-1918). These had previously been deleted but Glossa are now bringing them back as a double set.

Moreno plays a range of instruments made either by Lourdes Uncilla or by himself in order to infuse with a new vitality the fundamental repertories in the history of the guitar as bequeathed by the vihuelists Narváez, Milán and Mudarra, then later composed by figures such as Francisco Guerau, Santiago de Murcia and Gaspar Sanz, and subsequently through the romantic scores of Fernando Sor and Johann Kaspar Mertz. Tárrega and Llobet, the great masters of post-Romanticism, close this survey striding with infinite musicality across the most representative compositions of four centuries of the Spanish guitar. This special edition marks, as well, the departure point of a new process of collaboration between José Miguel Moreno and the label which he helped to create, with brand new recordings being planned, which will appear from the autumn of this year onwards.

The elegant, keyless, cylindrical flute of the sixteenth century had a reedy, penetrating sound, closer to the cornetto than to any other wind instrument of the day. It had an impressive range of two and a half octaves and an evenness of tone quality that would not be matched again until the nineteenth century.

The pieces on this recording focus on repertoire for the renaissance flute consort, almost all of which was originally vocal music.

Volume 4 of Segovia’s 1950’s American recordings is devoted in the main to his arrangements of music composed between 1535 and 1750. Although today it is customary to play this repertoire on reproductions of instruments authentically modelled on concepts of musicological research, Segovia preferred the 20th Century guitar to all other instruments as an expressive medium. To his interpretations of the 16th century works of Milan, Narvaez, Mudarra and Dowland, as well as the Baroque guitar of Robert de Visee and transcriptions from Scarlatti or Rameau, Segovia brings the same application of colour, variety of dynamics and rhythmic freedom as he applied to romantic pieces. This full blooded approach to early music was greatly appreciated during his lifetime and often provided one of the few opportunities for the general public to become acquainted with this area of the repertoire.

Roberto Festa and his Ensemble Daedalus present a superbly expressive picture on the subject of “melancholy” in 16th and 17th century music.

Scottish early music ensemble Fires of Love serve up a feast of songs and ballads from the Spanish Renaissance and early Baroque, with a freshness critic Norman Lebrecht calls simply ‘beautiful’. Repertoire includes works by Luys de Narváez, Miguel de Fuenllana, Luis Milán, Alonso Mudarra and Juan del Encina.