The lirone was used to highlight emotional peaks in music and was considered ideal for dramatic laments. It is a bowed string instrument that is held similar to a cello, but it has anywhere from nine to fourteen strings, with three or four strings being played at a time. The lirone (pronounced lee-roh-nay) was played throughout Italy from the late 16th through the 17th centuries. ![]() The noble class could afford expensive instruments, paper for the music, and professional musicians who would teach and compose music. There is a wonderful abundance of music for the viola da gamba, as it was an instrument that wealthy aristocrats played. In the Baroque period, the viola da gamba flourished in France and developed into a “French” instrument with the addition of a seventh string on the bass. Jews later traveled to England (around the time of Henry VIII) and brought the viola da gamba. In Italy, the viola da gamba was mostly an ensemble instrument that played vocal music, although it also played virtuosic improvisatory arrangements of solo songs. These nobles (especially Isabella d’Este in Mantua) took this new instrument and worked with their instrument makers to make it an “Italian” instrument, which is the viol we know today. ![]() When the Jews were expelled from Spain, many went to Italy and worked in the courts of Italian nobles. The viol is a hybrid of several Middle Eastern instruments and arrived first in Spain with Jewish musicians from the Middle East. The viola da gamba comes in a variety of ranges that correspond to the human voice: soprano, tenor, and bass. The viola da gamba (or viol) is a fretted instrument with from five to seven strings and is played with an underhand bow grip, rather than the overhand bow grip of the violin family. “Viola da gamba” literally means viola of the leg. The viola da gamba was one of the predominant instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Western Europe. This practice, called basso continuo or simply continuo, was a very common way of playing music in the Baroque period. Instruments such as the theorbo, harpsichord, Baroque guitar, and lirone are expected to know how to play the correct chords according to certain theoretical rules of harmony. The composer provides the material for the solo voices, and only a skeletal bass line for the accompanying instruments remains. The music in this opera is played in a creative and improvisatory manner that is surprisingly similar to jazz. So, I thought it would be handy to have an extra bit of program note material for people who might like to learn a bit more. (There are also some members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the pit, playing violin, cello, and bass.) Many people have approached us at intermission and following the concert, wanting to know more about the instruments and us. Highly recommended for libraries that wish to represent this way of performing ragtime, and as well for anyone who enjoys the genre.The Catacoustic Consort has been fortunate to collaborate with Cincinnati Opera in their first ever production of a Baroque opera - Cavalli's La Calisto. Sample James Scott's sublime Grace and Beauty: A Classy Rag (track 9) for a taste of this group's style at its best - they are not a virtuoso ensemble, but they have an infectious enthusiasm for the sweet aspect of classic ragtime that so often gets lost. The parts for violin and cello emerge more clearly from the texture here than in other performances, and the stringed instruments add a dimension of sentiment - in turn nicely set off against big march rhythms in more propulsive pieces like Joplin's The Cascades (track 4). And their performances have a charming lyricism and freedom that stand in contrast to the rather stiff renditions still available from the first flowering of the ragtime revival in the 1970s. The group assembled a complete set of parts (no simple feat in itself), using material from a New Orleans archive that once belonged to early jazzman Bunk Johnson. In many respects, however, this is an impressive reconstruction on the part of what appears to be an amateur ensemble. The title is a little inaccurate in the case of the present album, most of whose numbers, but not all, appeared in the publication. Joplin and other composers often orchestrated their rags in this way, and his publisher, Missourian John Stark, issued a collection of such orchestrations under the title The Red Back Book: Standard High Class Rags. But the average listener in the decade beginning in 1900 often heard instrumental ragtime in arrangements for small ensembles like Michigan's River Raisin Ragtime Revue, heard on this album. Scott Joplin and his contemporaries were pianists who composed their music on, and for, the piano. ![]() The question of what might constitute an "authentic" performance of classic ragtime is insoluble.
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