Medieval & Renaissance Music Performance by Piffaro, The Renaissance Band

Charles had been educated in the traditional Habsburg fashion, which placed great emphasis on the development of political acumen; but music was also highly valued - as recreation, as an instrument of state, and as the flower of the Catholic liturgy. Charles' Flemish chapel, composed of fifteen adult male singers and twelve boys handpicked from the low Countries and presided over by eminent chapelmasters, was very likely the best choir in Europe. Much less well-known today was his coterie of instrumentalists, or ministriles (minstrels), as they were called. Upon his coronantion as Rey de Castilla in 1518, Charles adopted the group of seven minstrels inherited from Ferdinand, his predecessor, and soon expanded it to ten members. It was this group that played for him in his chamber, traveled with him on his many journeys and perhaps occasionally accompanied the Flemish Chapel in liturgical celebration.

The Emperor's court, however, was far from being the only place where one could hear instrumental music in 16th century Spain. Following the example of Seville Cathedral in 1526, churches all over the land began hiring instrumental groups to supplement their choirs and provide purely instrumental music at particular moments in the liturgy. At first this was done as a simple expedient in order to produce more sound for less money, because minstrels were usually paid less than choir singers. However, the practice clearly became fashionable, for by mid-century there was hardly a church of any pretension in the country that lacked such an ensemble, and well-endowed cathedrals like Toledo, Granada, Burgos, Seville and Valencia all had one. In fact, the taste for instrumental music throughout Spain may well have distinguished the kingdom from others in the 16th century: though high-level instrumental music was common elsewhere, in no other country were so many instrumental groups employed in churches and so prominently heard in the liturgy.

Many of the great Spanish grandees, such as the Duke of Calabria, the Duke of Alba, the Marquis of Cenete (the Mendoza family), also had instrumentalists in their service; the middle and lower rungs of Spanish society did not suffer for lack of music either. Particularly in the larger cities, such as Madrid and Barcelona, freelance musicians abounded. Barcelona, for instance, had so many that its cathedral was never forced to hire a resident band and was always assured of having musicians on hand for religious feasts. As in other countries, itinerant musicians playing their bagpipes or flutes on the street were also common.

Instrumentalists in 16th-century Spain were multi-talented, as was the norm throughout Europe. Typically learning their trade through apprenticeship - their skills often handed down from father to son - they learned to play both stringed instruments and winds. Of the latter, there was a great variety, and we know precisely what they were from inventories of the Emperor's instrument collection taken later in the century. Charles' instrumentalists had access in the royal collection to consorts of violins and violas da gamba, lutes and vihuelas as bowed and plucked stringed instruments; consorts of small and large recorders (at both four- and eight-foot pitch); crumhorns from Germany and shawms of all sizes (form soprano to bass) for the double-reed instruments; cornetti both small and large, some of which had been made in Germany, and sackbuts in both brass and silver. Keyboard instruments were also common, but had their own virtuosi; professional wind-string minstrels seem not to have crossed over that line with any frequency. Knowing what instruments were used, though, is not the same thing as knowing what music the minstrels played.

Collections of music assembled for minstrels are recorded as having existed by mid-century, and the first to survive date from about the third quarter of the century. It is fairly clear from those and from the recorded practices of compiling the earlier books, though, that minstrels played virtually all genres of music of their day: French chansons, Italian madrigals, motets, Spanish villancicos, and even strictly liturgical items such as hymns and Marian antiphons used in processions, psalms set in fabordón, and occasionally Magnificats and sections from the Mass ordinary - although whether they played these works outside the context of the Mass or Vespers is an open question.

In the present recording PIFFARO has compiled a survey of this variety - not only of musical genres, but also of instrumental use, and music-making in different levels of society. The selection ranges from works as early as the devotional villancico Adorámoste, Señor by Francisco de la Torre, chapelmaster to Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the 15th century, and the decidedly non-devotional villancicos of his contemporaries Ortega and Juan del Encina (who had served the Duke of Alba and was in Salamanca when Columbus stayed there before his voyage of discovery), to De la piel de sus ovejas by Pedro Ruimonte (anthologized by the minstrels in Puebla, Mexico, as late as the 1670s). Other secular works included are villancicos by Francisco Guerrero, the great chapelmaster of Seville Cathedral in the latter half of the 16th century, and by one of his canons in the church, the virtuoso vihuelist Alonso Mudarra. Mateo Flecha, who served the Duke of Calabrai in Valencia, is represented by his ensalada, La guerra, inspired by Charles V's victory over Francis I of France at Pavia in 1525.

Compositions by Portuguese composers are also well represented, especially among the sacred works in the program. The most noble musician is certainly João IV (1604-1656), a great collector of music and books. His library was one of the finest in Europe until its destruction in the great earthquake and fire that struck Lisbon on All Saint's Day 1755. Most travelled, though, is Gaspar Fernandes, a native of Évora, who passed his career in Guatemala City and Puebla Cathedrals as organist, chapelmaster and composer. His Pois con tanta graça, almost certainly composed in Puebla (though its title is in Portuguese), now survives only in a manuscript in Oaxaca. Its irregular, lively rhythms betray the influence of the Indians who served as musicians and instrumentalists in the Mexican churches in the 17th century.

The bagpipe has been an important folk instrument in Spain since the Middle Ages at least. The musicians of PIFFARO use it to portray the mendicant aspect of Spanish music-making: performing tunes very much as folk musicians would have done, improvising over well-known dance melodies. The lives of these humble virtuosi were very different and probably much harder than those of their more illustrious confrères with well-paid cathedral or court appointments. Yet they all contributed to the rich hues and emotional variety of Spanish music, making it among the most immediately appealing of all Renaissance musical repertoires.

-- Douglas Kirk

Credits
Executive producer: Dr. Peter Czornyj
Recording producer: Sid McLauchlan
Tonmeister: Andrew Wedman
Recording Engineer: Reinhild Schmidt
Photos: Joseph Chielli, Church Street Studios, Philadelphia, PA

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