Robert Jones: The Second Booke of Songs and Ayres (1601)
Cantar alla Viola
Nadine Balbeisi – soprano
Fernando Marín – lyra-viol
Label – La Má de Guido
The Second Booke of Songs and Ayres (1601) by Robert Jones is a collection of 21 songs “set out to the Lute and Bass Viol the plain way, or the Bass by tablature after the lyre fashion.” The manuscript includes a part for lyra-viol in bass tablature to accompany one voice, which is the version we have chosen for this interpretation. Owing to the mixed scordatura (different tunings of the open strings) and the sympathetic strings, the lyra-viol accompanies and carries the voice well and sustains the polyphony like an organ. Thus is the polyphony preserved in its complete harmony and magnificence while enabling the beautiful Elizabethan poetry to become the protagonist in this marvelous renaissance portrait.
“It is something for fine ears in romantic hours of early baroque.” – Reinhard Kriechbaum, Concerto