L’entropia
Lina Tur Bonet (violin), Jadran Duncumb (theorbo)
rec. 2024, Muziekhaven Zaandam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Reviewed as a download
Glossa GCD924704 [70]

Some discs come with a title which does not give any idea of what to expect. The present disc is a case in point; I don’t think anyone seeing this title will think it’s a disc that must be heard. Lina Tur Bonet explains in her liner-notes: “The word “entropy” comes from the Greek (ἐντροπία), and originally means evolution or transformation. It is also a good symbol (if I may have poetic license) of the change of direction in the face of unexpected turns, of the unpredictable, of the infinite possibilities that a piece of music harbors – within the framework that is the score – when two musicians come together for that musical conversation.” 

She emphasizes that the intimate line-up of two players with their own instrument may lead to something they did not expect. “There is then no leadership, but rather a kind of flow of ideas and sounds that meet and feed each other, influencing each other. And with all this the pieces are knitted little by little and taking shape.” She states that she has a special love for music of the 17th century, which is entirely in line with the above quotations. The 17th century was the era of what Athanasius Kircher called the stylus phantasticus. Music written in this style is unpredictable, and many pieces consist of sections of a contrasting character, which follow each other attacca.

The programme is a kind of survey of what was written in the course of the 17th century, from the early stages of the seconda pratica (Fontana, Marini) to the influences of the Italian style north of the Alps (Westhoff).

Biagio Marini was born in Brescia and was educated as a violinist, His first position as a professional musician was as violinist at St Mark’s, Venice, in 1615. During his career he worked in many places, such as Parma, Neuburg an die Donau, Brussels, Milan, Bergamo, Düsseldorf and Ferrara. He moved back and forth between various cities, which undoubtedly tells us something about his reputation. He was also a prolific composer. His Op. 1 was printed in 1617, his Op. 22 in 1655. He is the first composer making use of double stopping. The Sonata IV and the Romanesca are fine examples of his art. The latter is an example of a fashion which lasted during the entire 17th century: the use of melodic-harmonic formulas for increasingly virtuosic variations.

Marini’s contemporary Giovanni Battista Fontana is one of the most famous composers of the early baroque period. Although he was a violinist by profession and may have conceived his sonatas for his own instrument in the first place, it is fully legitimate to play them on other instruments. The title of the collection from which they are taken – the only printed edition of his works, published posthumously in 1641 – specifically mentions the possibility of using other instruments. Composers were mostly rather pragmatic and were interested in a wide dissemination of their works, which was more likely if they did not confine themselves to writing for one specific instrument. Thus, I have heard the solo sonatas more often on recorder than on the violin and have a recording of the Sonata II on recorder and a large organ; in comparison, this performance on violin and theorbo offers an entirely new perspective, especially with regard to dynamics.

Giuseppe Colombi is one of the least-known composers in the programme. He was also a violinist by profession and worked as such at the court of the Duke of Modena, where he also may have been born. All his published editions include pieces for two violins; solo works, like the one performed here, have been preserved in manuscript. The title Sarabanda con la scordatura refers to a technique that has become especially known through the works of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. It means that the standard tuning of an instrument is changed in order to create special effects.

Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli is a bit of a shadowy figure, as we know very little about him. However, he is one of the most interesting composers for the violin, which explains why his two sets of sonatas Opp. 3 and 4 have been recorded a number of times, and individual sonatas regularly appear on concert programmes. He was born in 1629 in Montepulciano in Tuscany. Not long after his birth the family moved to Venice, and in the 1650s Pandolfo Mealli – the latter name he took from his stepfather – entered the service of the Princess de’ Medici in Innsbruck. He gave up his job in 1660, and after that we meet him again in 1669. In that year a publication of instrumental pieces was printed in Rome, in which he is mentioned as violinist in the chapel of the cathedral of Messina on Sicily. He left Messina after an incident in which he killed a castrato singer and fled to Spain. There he started working as a violinist in the Capilla Real of Madrid. He must have died not long after 1679.

All the sonatas of both collections bear names which mostly refer to musicians from his time, some of whom were Mealli’s colleagues in Innsbruck. Whether these are intended as a kind of musical portraits is impossible to say. It could well be that by giving his sonatas titles derived from their names, Pandolfi Mealli wanted to pay respect to them. The title of the Sonata VI La Vinciolina, the last sonata of the Op. 4, refers to a lady with the name of Teodora Vincioli, whose identity hasn’t yet been established. It is a brilliant example of the stylus phantasticus.

Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde was from Spain, and was educated as a player of the dulcian. In the late 1620s he worked at the court of Archduke Leopold in Innsbruck. All his extant music is included in the Canzoni fantasie et correnti da suonar, which has been preserved in a Venetian reprint of 1638. These pieces are for one to four instruments and basso continuo, and are frequently played and recorded by early music ensembles. The present disc closes with the Sonata III, which was originally intended for his own instrument. It attests to his brilliance on the dulcian, but can be played on other instruments as well, as this performance on the violin shows.

Nicola Matteis was educated at the violin in Naples, and settled in England, where he caused astonishment with his performances, using playing techniques the English had never heard. One feature of his playing was double stopping, a technique which was not employed by English composers. This may explain why Matteis in the third and fourth volumes of his Ayres for the Violin marked the double stops and a few flourishes in hollow dotted notation indicating that they could be left out by less advanced players. Many titles of his pieces are rather mysterious, but Scaramuccia obviously refers to the commedia dell’arte. The collections not only include pieces with basso continuo, but also for unaccompanied violin. Passaggio Rotta and Fantasia are among them. The Ciaccona is an example of a basso ostinato pattern frequently used in the 17th and 18th centuries. Matteis’ music is not textbook stylus phantasticus, but still “fantastic”, full of surprises and often quite bizarre (as some of his pieces are called).

It was Carlo Farina who was at the cradle of the German violin school. Two representatives of this school are included here. One is Samuel Capricornus, who was born in Schertitz (Zercice) in Bohemia and baptised with the name of Samuel Friedrich Bockshorn. In order to escape from religious persecution his family fled to upper Hungary. In Vienna he came into contact with leading Italian composers. In 1657 he was appointed Kapellmeister at the court in Stuttgart where he stayed for the rest of his life. In a conflict with his colleague Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, who criticized him for violating the rules of traditional counterpoint, Capricornus used the above-mentioned Athanasius Kircher to support his view that it was not right to break the rules of counterpoint, except in the interest of expression and in order to emphasize specific words, which attests to his Italian leanings. Lina Tur Bonet, in her liner-notes, rightly states that he deserves more attention. Unfortunately, the track-list does not indicate where the Sonata in E minor comes from, as the work-list in New Grove does not mention any piece for solo violin; there is also nothing of this kind in the Petrucci Music Library.

The German violinist and composer Johann Paul von Westhoff is mostly mentioned only for having influenced Johann Sebastian Bach in his writing of his sonatas and partitas for violin solo. Apart from six partitas for unaccompanied violin, he wrote six sonatas for violin and basso continuo. They include some pieces of a descriptive nature, such as the imitation of bells in the third. The violin plays patterns of four notes at different pitches. The bass part is indicated as “il violone senza cembalo”; it plays quarters in a staccato rhythm (here the theorbo).

I have heard several of Lina Tur Bonet’s recordings in recent years, and have noted that she is a performer of quite some temperament. That shows here again in abundance in repertoire which obviously suits her ideally. Her performances are imaginative, but also differentiated. Her playing is bold and zestful, then subtle and intimate. If one wants to get a good impression, listen to Pandolfi Mealli’s sonata, for instance. This is a disc full of surprises, both with regard to repertoire and performance. Jadran Duncumb, who is best-known as a member of the admirable Ensemble Diderot, is Ms Bonet’s perfect partner. In some pieces his playing is restrained, in other cases he is almost the violin’s equal. He has two nice solos, on the theorbo (Kapsperger) and the guitar (Corbetta).

To sum up: this is an exciting disc, a demonstration of the stylus phantasticus at its very best.

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

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Contents
Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656-1705)
Sonata III in D minor:
Imitazione delle Campane
Giovanni Antoniio Pandolfi Mealli (1629-after 1679)
Sonata VI La Vinciolina in d minor, op. 4,6
Biagio Marini (1594-1663)
Romanesca
Giuseppe Colombi (1635-1694)
Sarabanda con la scordatura
Samuel Capricornus (1628-1665)
Sonata in E minor
Jean-Baptiste Drouart de Bousset (1662-1725)
Printemps
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (1580-1651)
Ballo
Giovanni Battista Fontana (1571-1630)
Sonata II
Nicola Matteis (1650-1714)
Preludio in Fantasia
Scaramuccia
Passaggio Rotto
Fantasia
Biagio Marini
Sonata IV
Francesco Corbetta (c1615-1681)
Folias
Nicola Matteis
Adagio
Ciaccona sopra la vecchia Sarabanda
Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde (1595-1640)
Sonata III