The Last Rose
Zachary Wilder (tenor)
Mathilde Vialle (viola da gamba), Thibaut Roussel (archlute, guitar), Ronan Khalil (virginals)
rec. 2024, Cité de la musique, Paris
Texts included
Reviewed as a download
Harmonia mundi HMM902505 [70]

In the early days of historical performance practice, when only a few people were familiar with instruments of the past still in their original state, recordings were made to present these instruments in music which was written for them. Nowadays, baroque flutes and violins, and instruments which are not part of the modern orchestra, such as the viola da gamba, are generally well-known, so such recordings are hardly needed. Even so, sometimes specific historical instruments inspire performers to make a recording to show its particular qualities, especially when they are preserved in museums and seldom, if ever, used for live performances or recordings. That is the case with the recording under review.

The Musée de la musique in Paris owns a viola da gamba, made by the English luthier John Pitts in 1679, and an archlute by the Venice-based luthier Christoph Koch, which dates from 1654. These instruments are played in this recording, and given when they were made, the performers decided to focus on music from the second half of the 17th century. As one can see in the track-list, English composers are particularly well-represented. Whether that makes this an English programme is an interesting question. Are the anonymous suites for viola da gamba and basso continuo English? More about that later.

The starting point for this recording is a manuscript in two volumes, preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, including pieces by an English viola da gamba virtuoso with the name of Anthony Poole. If you take a look at the article on him in New Grove you will find just two paragraphs with nine lines in total. The bibliography includes only two titles, none of which deals specifically with this 17th-century English composer. It is thanks to Patxi Xabier del Amo Iribarren, who wrote a doctoral thesis about him, that we know more than what New Grove has to offer.

Poole was a Catholic and this was probably the main reason that he left England at the age of 12. That was in August 1641; he travelled to Saint-Omer in the southern Netherlands where he became a pupil at the English Jesuit College. There he spent the next five years of his life being educated in the humanities. Consort music played a special role; according to the Constitutiones of 1601, the pupils should be properly instructed in this kind of music. However, as the college was at the crossroads of various styles, it seems likely that Poole also became acquainted with what was going on at the continental music scene.

In 1646 Poole arrived in Rome where he became a student at the English College. There he had the chance to experience performances of music by some of the main masters of the time, such as Carissimi and the Mazzocchi brothers. Girolamo Frescobaldi, who had died in 1643, was still an influential force in the realm of keyboard music. The college was known for its “ensemble of music for viols in which the English masters excel”. Unfortunately, even Del Amo has not been able to find any information about Poole’s activities in Rome. However, some pieces bear titles of martyrs, such as St Fortunatus and St Martina; they were especially cultivated by the Jesuit order. Jonathan Keates, in his liner-notes, points out “their ambiguous role, nuanced by both the sacred and the secular.” These pieces may bear the name of martyrs, “[yet] these are also movements for dancing, which ordained clergy might hardly be expected to favour. So too is the Chacone, an example of that robust triple-time dance measure, originating in Spain (…)”.

Two years after his arrival Poole was released from his religious vows and left the College. He also disappeared from the registers of the Jesuit Order. In 1658 he appears at Watten, a village around six miles from Saint-Omer. He had entered the service of the English Jesuit College and was responsible for the performance and teaching of instrumental music. According to a document, he was not only an excellent musician, but “gifted in many other areas, if he were not so reserved”. It seems that he suffered increasingly from mental problems, which a document of 1678 describes as phlegmatism mixed with melancholy. From 1679 until his death, he worked at the Jesuit College in Liège as director of conscience and counsellor, but in the early 1680s he was already diagnosed with “mental weakness”.

Pieces by Poole have mainly appeared in anthologies. In 2015 Musica Ficta released a disc entirely devoted to music by Poole, performed by the ensemble Transports Publics, directed by Thomas Baeté. Their programme focuses on divisions, that typical English genre of the 17th century. However, they also play the Chacone, which is part of the programme at the present disc. It is the first item in the manuscript, which includes mainly anonymous pieces. Among them are the suites for viola da gamba and basso continuo. The titles of the various movements suggest that these adhere to the French tradition. They “mirror the growing popularity of such collections, soon to reach their apogee in the works of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe and Marin Marais”, Keates writes.

The rest of the programme is undoubtedly English, even the song by Pietro Reggio, one of a number of immigrants, who were active at the English music scene during the 17th century. They were responsible for foreign influences, but some English-born composers went abroad to widen their horizon, and showed in their music what they had learned. John Coprario was one of them: he Italianised his name (Cooper) and his song O grief, part of the cycle Songs of Mourning, written at the occasion of the death of Crown Prince Henry in 1612, shows the influences of the Italian style.

With the songs by Blow and Purcell we are in the baroque style, which made a relatively late appearance in England, and started to dominate music life from the Restoration (1660) onwards. The inclusion of a song from Blow’s collection Amphion Anglicus is most welcome, as it does not receive the interest it deserves (neither does Blow as a composer, for that matter). It is disappointing that from the oeuvre of Purcell we get again that evergreen Music for a while. Even in his oeuvre there are songs that are seldom performed.

The genre of the divisions, to which Poole contributed quite a number of pieces, as the disc by Transports Publics shows, is represented here with a piece by Francis Withy, and that makes sense, as he was a Catholic, too – he was from a family of Catholic musicians in Oxford – and may have known Poole’s music. During the second half of the 17th century several collections of pieces mainly for amateurs were published, in particular by the Playfords. Several pieces from such collections are included here, such as A Scotch Tune by Benjamin Hely, included in The Compleat Violist of 1699.

The last item gave the disc its title, but it is from an entirely different time. ‘Tis the last rose of summer is a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852) and was set to a traditional tune; they were published together in 1813. It is a mystery to me why it has been included here in an arrangement for instruments from a different era.

Although this recording was inspired by two precious historical instruments, one of them, the archlute, is played in only five items, which I find rather odd; in other pieces, another instrument is used, and in a few pieces a guitar. It is not explained in the booklet. It is nice that it can be heard on its own in Kapsperger’s Toccata VI. The viola da gamba is used in all the pieces, except in Hely’s A Scotch Tune, where Mathilde Vialle plays a treble viol. Her performances are exceptional, and I especially enjoyed the anonymous suites. The historical instrument clearly inspired her, and that is easy to understand. It has recently been restored to playing condition, and she seems to be the first who was given the opportunity to use it for a recording. The playing of Thibaut Roussel and Ronan Khalil is excellent as well.

I am less happy with the singing of Zachary Wilder. He regularly takes part in recordings of early music, and have heard good things from him. However, his performances are rather uneven, and here I find him disappointing, especially due to the incessant tremolo in each piece. It is not very large, but I don’t like it and it is out of place here. Purcell’s Music for a while is a bit slow, and I have heard more subtle performances.

That should prevent no one from purchasing this disc. The programme is varied, and includes mostly pieces that are little-known. The playing and the use of two unique instruments are further reasons to add this disc to one’s collection.

Johan van Veen
www.musica-dei-donum.org
twitter.com/johanvanveen

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Contents
anon
Suite in G minor
Greensleeves
John Playford (1623-c1686)
Bonny brow
anon
Suite in D minor
John Coprario (c1570-1626)
Songs of Mourning:
O grief
Tobias Hume (c1569-1645)
The Spirit of Gambo
anon
Suite in D
Thomas Preston (?-1563) (attr)
Uppon la mi re (arr Thibaut Roussel)
John Blow (1649-1708)
Tell me no more you love
Anthony Poole (c1629-1692)
St Fortunatus
St Martina
Chacone (prima)
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (c1580-1651)
Toccata VI (Libro I)
Pietro Reggio (1632-1685)
To Corinna
Francis Withy (c1645-1727)
Divisions in G minor
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Music for a while
Benjamin Hely (c1654-c1719)
A Scotch Tune
anon
Borgia
‘Tis the last rose of summer (arr Thibaut Roussel & Mathilde Vialle)