[LUTE] Re: De Visee
This may be apocryphal, but I remember having read that Corbetta taught young Charles II in France after the Queen Mother fled there with him to avoid Cromwell and, after the restoration, Charles brought Corbetta to England. While in France Corbetta had acquired the franchise for an Italian game of chance similar to roulette which he brought with him to England. After a while in England, Corbetta's gambling franchise became so successful that the young nobles of England were gambling away their fortunes and their elders petitioned the king to send Corbetta back to France. Charles gave in to their petition, but not before giving Corbetta a large some of money and a wife to take with him. I've often wondered if the introduction of gambling as a past time of the wealthy may have been a factor in the disappearance of the soft-voiced instruments (the lutes, plucked keyboards, gambas, recorders, etc.) in the eighteenth century and their replacement by heavier, high tensioned string instruments and brass wind instruments etc. It seems that as long as music and dancing was the past time of the wealthy, said wealthy maintained musicians as part of their household staffs, but that all changed when gambling became the order of the day putting everybody out of work. In response the musicians invented the concert hall playing for all and sundry who could afford a ticket or subscription. Of course, then the idea would have been to put as many rear ends in as many seats as possible making the louder instruments the preferred instruments. This idea may have occurred to me while I sat at the back of an audience of 300 struggling and failing to hear a solo lute concert I paid $40 to attend. Remember Diana Spencer (Lady Di) was heading for a casino when she had that car accident that took her life. Gary On 2014-03-02 13:22, Monica Hall wrote: Many many thanks for all this fascinating information. Jourdan must have been quite an important person in Louis' household. I have only one comment - Corbetta died in 1681 so he can't have succeeded Jourdon in 1695 and in any case he spent most of his last 20 years in England although he visited France again on a number of occasions. Perhaps he gave Louis a few master classes when he was in Paris. Best Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
Good morning to all, I exchanged a mail with Monica without realising that I had sent it to her only and not to her plus the list... My mistake ;-( but not very important anyway. I sometimes get confused in the choices to reply to messages... Anyway, Monica quoted an part of the article in Le Mercure Galant relating Corbetta's death in april 1681, and you can also read the original item directly from the Bibliothèque Nationale digital library Gallica at the following address : http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62252133/f133.image Most of the Mercure Galant collection is available online and for downloading, which, as you know, is a mine of information about what we are all interested in ! The obituary of Corbetta refers to the participation of Corbetta to les plus pompeux spectacles at the request of Louis XIV. It is true that he appeared in his Italian colleague's (Lulli's) production le Ballet de la Galanterie du Temps in 1656. Corbetta had been invited to France by Mazarin and appeared in several entrées with guitars, including one in which he played along with the young Louis XIV himself. He also accompanied the famous Italian singer Anna Bergerotti and the French Anne de La Barre. The Petits Violons, a creation of Lulli when he took over from his Italian predecessor Lazarini, made their first appearance in this Ballet too. The text of the Ballet is available online in a later copy (1705) by Philidor and the manuscript version is dated 1660, but it prserves the names of those who took part in it, including Corbetti (sic) : http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1036755 (the Ballet in qustion begins on page 57 of the ms). Regarding the reason why de Visée was much more in demand than Louis Jourdan is unknown. Maybe Jourdan was not such a good guitar player after all and the king preferred the much more talented de Visée... Conjecture again as ever ;-) Incidentally, this 1656 Ballet also employed the theorbo players de La Barre, Vincent, Ytier (= Ithier), Grénerin, Le Moine and Hurel... What a dream team it must have been ;-) Best, Jean-Marie -- After the remarks made about Satoh's liner notes, I hate to cite any others, but in Philippe Beaussant's rather poignant notes to Hopkison Smith's Pieces de Theorbe (Astree 7733), claim is made that Corbetta became known to Louis when Lully had the two play together in le Ballet de la Galanterie du temps. I believe this was1656. Corbetta must have been proud of this performance, since it is mentioned in both prefaces to his book of 1671. I reason (conjecture again!) that guitar instructions from Corbetta to the King would have been earlier rather than later. Jourdan was succeeded by his son, Louis Anne, in 1695. So, why was it de Visee, not Jourdan, who was specifically called on to play the guitar to Louis while the latter was recovering from his almost-fatal illness of 1686? The guitar-loving king must have admired his playing. (Incidentally, it was while performing the Te Deum written to celebrate Louis' recovery from this illness that Lully suffered the wound that caused his death.) Peter On Mar 2, 2014, at 1:22 PM, Monica Hall mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Many many thanks for all this fascinating information. Jourdan must have been quite an important person in Louis' household. I have only one comment - Corbetta died in 1681 so he can't have succeeded Jourdon in 1695 and in any case he spent most of his last 20 years in England although he visited France again on a number of occasions. Perhaps he gave Louis a few master classes when he was in Paris. Best Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
Jean-Marie, On Mon, 3/3/14, Jean-Marie Poirier jmpoiri...@wanadoo.fr wrote: Incidentally, this 1656 Ballet also employed the theorbo players de La Barre, Vincent, Ytier (= Ithier), Grénerin, Le Moine and Hurel... What a dream team it must have been ;-) I'm sure their voice leading must have been impeccable. ;-) Chris Dr. Christopher Wilke D.M.A. Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer www.christopherwilke.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
:-) ! For sure ! Jean-Marie -- Jean-Marie, On Mon, 3/3/14, Jean-Marie Poirier jmpoiri...@wanadoo.fr wrote: Incidentally, this 1656 Ballet also employed the theorbo players de La Barre, Vincent, Ytier (= Ithier), Grénerin, Le Moine and Hurel... What a dream team it must have been ;-) I'm sure their voice leading must have been impeccable. ;-) Chris Dr. Christopher Wilke D.M.A. Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer www.christopherwilke.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
Some of this is true. Corbetta certainly followed Charles II to England in 1660 and he was granted various franchises to organize games of chance in London. These are documented in the Official State Papers for the relevant period. The bit about the elders petitioning the King to send him back to France seems to me to be apocryphal. Gambling was endemic in royal circles - not just in England but also in France I believe. He went back and forth to France regularly during 1660-1681. He was probably obliged to leave England in March 1673 when the Test Act was signed by Charles II requiring every office holder at Court to take Communion in the Church of England. Presumably Corbetta was Catholic. But he was back by the end of 1674 when he was involved in the production of the play Calisto in which various members of the royal family took part. The obituary does say that Charles granted Corbetta a pension and found him a wife. I haven't been able to find any record of the marriage. Without knowing the date it is difficult to trace records of the marriage which would probably have been conducted according to Catholic rites. I am currently working on a detailed biography of Corbetta but is is often the way - it keeps stalling. MOnica - Original Message - From: gary magg...@sonic.net To: lutelist lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 8:59 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: De Visee This may be apocryphal, but I remember having read that Corbetta taught young Charles II in France after the Queen Mother fled there with him to avoid Cromwell and, after the restoration, Charles brought Corbetta to England. While in France Corbetta had acquired the franchise for an Italian game of chance similar to roulette which he brought with him to England. After a while in England, Corbetta's gambling franchise became so successful that the young nobles of England were gambling away their fortunes and their elders petitioned the king to send Corbetta back to France. Charles gave in to their petition, but not before giving Corbetta a large some of money and a wife to take with him. I've often wondered if the introduction of gambling as a past time of the wealthy may have been a factor in the disappearance of the soft-voiced instruments (the lutes, plucked keyboards, gambas, recorders, etc.) in the eighteenth century and their replacement by heavier, high tensioned string instruments and brass wind instruments etc. It seems that as long as music and dancing was the past time of the wealthy, said wealthy maintained musicians as part of their household staffs, but that all changed when gambling became the order of the day putting everybody out of work. In response the musicians invented the concert hall playing for all and sundry who could afford a ticket or subscription. Of course, then the idea would have been to put as many rear ends in as many seats as possible making the louder instruments the preferred instruments. This idea may have occurred to me while I sat at the back of an audience of 300 struggling and failing to hear a solo lute concert I paid $40 to attend. Remember Diana Spencer (Lady Di) was heading for a casino when she had that car accident that took her life. Gary On 2014-03-02 13:22, Monica Hall wrote: Many many thanks for all this fascinating information. Jourdan must have been quite an important person in Louis' household. I have only one comment - Corbetta died in 1681 so he can't have succeeded Jourdon in 1695 and in any case he spent most of his last 20 years in England although he visited France again on a number of occasions. Perhaps he gave Louis a few master classes when he was in Paris. Best Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
Yes - I often forget to copy the list in when replying to messages! Easily done. Thanks for the various references. The British Library has Mercure Galante which is where I got it from but the other things will be an invaluable. Corbetta must have known all the players who took part in Galanterie. He probably knew Bartolotti who was also in Paris and took part in various things. It was a small world. All the royal families and nobility were related to one another. One big clan. Best Monica - Original Message - From: Jean-Marie Poirier jmpoiri...@wanadoo.fr To: Peter Danner peter...@aol.com; Monica Hall mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk Cc: 'Lute List' lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 9:24 AM Subject: Re: Re: [LUTE] De Visee Good morning to all, I exchanged a mail with Monica without realising that I had sent it to her only and not to her plus the list... My mistake ;-( but not very important anyway. I sometimes get confused in the choices to reply to messages... Anyway, Monica quoted an part of the article in Le Mercure Galant relating Corbetta's death in april 1681, and you can also read the original item directly from the Bibliothèque Nationale digital library Gallica at the following address : http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62252133/f133.image Most of the Mercure Galant collection is available online and for downloading, which, as you know, is a mine of information about what we are all interested in ! The obituary of Corbetta refers to the participation of Corbetta to les plus pompeux spectacles at the request of Louis XIV. It is true that he appeared in his Italian colleague's (Lulli's) production le Ballet de la Galanterie du Temps in 1656. Corbetta had been invited to France by Mazarin and appeared in several entrées with guitars, including one in which he played along with the young Louis XIV himself. He also accompanied the famous Italian singer Anna Bergerotti and the French Anne de La Barre. The Petits Violons, a creation of Lulli when he took over from his Italian predecessor Lazarini, made their first appearance in this Ballet too. The text of the Ballet is available online in a later copy (1705) by Philidor and the manuscript version is dated 1660, but it prserves the names of those who took part in it, including Corbetti (sic) : http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1036755 (the Ballet in qustion begins on page 57 of the ms). Regarding the reason why de Visée was much more in demand than Louis Jourdan is unknown. Maybe Jourdan was not such a good guitar player after all and the king preferred the much more talented de Visée... Conjecture again as ever ;-) Incidentally, this 1656 Ballet also employed the theorbo players de La Barre, Vincent, Ytier (= Ithier), Grénerin, Le Moine and Hurel... What a dream team it must have been ;-) Best, Jean-Marie -- After the remarks made about Satoh's liner notes, I hate to cite any others, but in Philippe Beaussant's rather poignant notes to Hopkison Smith's Pieces de Theorbe (Astree 7733), claim is made that Corbetta became known to Louis when Lully had the two play together in le Ballet de la Galanterie du temps. I believe this was1656. Corbetta must have been proud of this performance, since it is mentioned in both prefaces to his book of 1671. I reason (conjecture again!) that guitar instructions from Corbetta to the King would have been earlier rather than later. Jourdan was succeeded by his son, Louis Anne, in 1695. So, why was it de Visee, not Jourdan, who was specifically called on to play the guitar to Louis while the latter was recovering from his almost-fatal illness of 1686? The guitar-loving king must have admired his playing. (Incidentally, it was while performing the Te Deum written to celebrate Louis' recovery from this illness that Lully suffered the wound that caused his death.) Peter On Mar 2, 2014, at 1:22 PM, Monica Hall mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Many many thanks for all this fascinating information. Jourdan must have been quite an important person in Louis' household. I have only one comment - Corbetta died in 1681 so he can't have succeeded Jourdon in 1695 and in any case he spent most of his last 20 years in England although he visited France again on a number of occasions. Perhaps he gave Louis a few master classes when he was in Paris. Best Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
On 03/03/14 9:28 AM, Monica Hall wrote: Yes - I often forget to copy the list in when replying to messages! Easily done. I do that all the time here too. Most email lists are configured so that the default is for the reply to go to the list, so I automatically hit the reply button instead of reply all. Wayne, could you reconfigure the default on the server so that it conforms to most other lists? Corbetta sounds like an interesting figure...I look forward to your biography of him. Those grand court spectacles must have been a lot of fun for the musicians as well as the audience, somewhat like the lute orchestras we participate in at Lute Society get-togethers. When else do duffers like me (and Louis XIV) get to play along with the hotshots of the day? Geoff -- Geoff Gaherty Foxmead Observatory Coldwater, Ontario, Canada http://www.gaherty.ca http://starrynightskyevents.blogspot.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] new works for lute
To those interested There's a 'new' composer for lute: Louis Bispo. He made a website where you can download his scores and read a little about his background: [1]http://llawrencebispo.com/ David *** David van Ooijen [2]davidvanooi...@gmail.com [3]www.davidvanooijen.nl *** -- References 1. http://llawrencebispo.com/ 2. mailto:davidvanooi...@gmail.com 3. http://www.davidvanooijen.nl/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] simple tunes for the wire-strung guittar form a Pocket Companion, 1760
Most music for the English guitar, or wire-strung guittar, is very simple: just a single melodic line and almost always in C major. An early tutor for the instrument suggests that the player could add a bit more harmony but probably many players just played the single lines. Straube published a collection of guittar music with some of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire but in a section devoted to country dances he just has single lines. Here are six little tunes from a publication of Thomas Habgood in 1760: Nancy's Choice Because I was a bonny lad Hornpipe We are all well at Canterbury Will O' the wisp The Chaplet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq6PEFzBPtI Stuart --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] de Visee
Before leaving this de Visee thread, which has treated at times of wander OT, I would like to offer one brief reminiscence. One of my previous posts referred to Hoppy Smith's 1979 album of de Visee theorbo music. The previous year, 1978, I had found myself at the LSA seminar held at Dominican College in San Rafael, CA, in my capacity as president of the Lute Society of America and editor of its Journal. Hoppy was at this seminar, and I had the good fortune to draw him for a roommate. At that time, de Visee was very much in his active repertoire. The night before his major concert of the week, as I was turning in after a long day, he said he hoped I wouldn't mind if he stayed up to practice his theorbo. I tell you there is nothing quit so serene as being lulled to sleep by the strains of Sylvains de Couperin as performed live by a fine player in the same room. I have never forgotten the magic of that moment. Louis XIV himself couldn't have had it better, Such are the privileges of office. Peter Danner To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: de Visee
Hadnt he hurt his finger then? IIRC, someone told me he had injured a finger, so he played the whole concert with two fingers and thumb and I certainly didn't notice any ill effects. Or maybe it was his LH that was injured. I cant remember, other than it was magical. In those days it was kind of rare to hear a whole concert of one composer performed on a single instrument. On Mar 4, 2014, at 8:39 AM, Peter Danner peter...@aol.com wrote: One of my previous posts referred to Hoppy Smith's 1979 album of de Visee theorbo music. The previous year, 1978, I had found myself at the LSA seminar held at Dominican College in San Rafael, CA, in my capacity as president of the Lute Society of America and editor of its Journal. Hoppy was at this seminar, and I had the good fortune to draw him for a roommate. At that time, de Visee was very much in his active repertoire. The night before his major concert of the week, as I was turning in after a long day, he said he hoped I wouldn't mind if he stayed up to practice his theorbo. I tell you there is nothing quit so serene as being lulled to sleep by the strains of Sylvains de Couperin as performed live by a fine player in the same room. I have never forgotten the magic of that moment. Louis XIV himself couldn't have had it better, Such are the privileges of office. Peter Danner Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch https://soundcloud.com/ed-durbrow http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
