Music and Musicians
The Musicians
Ricardo Barros, Music Director of the May Concert "Lord Hay's Masqe"
Mercurius
Ricardo Barros – keyboard
Lisete de Silva – recorders
Liam Byrne - viola da gamba
http://www.mercuriuscompany.co.uk/
Baroque Future
Aldona Bartnik - soprano;
Kasia Justyńska - flutes;
Adrian Gawłowski - flutes;
Władysław Kosendiak - cynk/corneto
Magdalena Garbacz - baroque violin;
Julia Karpeta - viola da gamba (soprano/bass);
Radek Dembiński - viola da gamba;
Szczepan Dembiński - baroque cello;
Mateusz Ławniczak - voice and guitar;
Fabiana Raban - drums
The Music of the Masques
The masque usually began with an "antimasque" of comic, exotic or grotesque characters, which was followed by the solemn dances of the masque proper, and concluded with the social dances of "the Revels".
With the extraordinary variety of tone and character embraced by the drama and dance of the Masque, it is no surprise to find an equal variety in the music. From the solemnity of the Masquers, through the eccentricities of witches and lunatics in the antimasques, to the joyous celebration of the Revels, the music of the Masque covered a wide range of dramatic expression.
While composers would be familiar with writing courtly dance music such as almains or galliards, or composing expressive songs, an unusual degree of dramatic invention was required for the exotic characters of the antimasque. Composers needed to write what was in effect programme music: the lunatics shake and shudder; they scurry round in circles; they are sad; they are manically happy; they are overtaken by fear and dread…
There is no complete body of music that has survived from a single masque, but various sources yield some four hundred pieces from the masque genre, mostly dances. Modern musicians can work with dance researchers to discover tempi and moods from the fashionable court dances; but, since there are no sources telling us how to approach the antimasque music, we must, like the composers themselves, use our dramatic senses. Antimasque music often interrupts its melody with a pause-marked note, sometimes at the start of a phrase but also, often, in the middle. It is thought that these "long notes" were an opportunity for the musicians to create dramatic effects following the performers' actions, a bit like the pianists who improvised music for screenings of the silent films.
The masque music which survives is sometimes anonymous, but we also have music from court composers such as Campion, Ferrabosco, Coperario, Johnson, Lanier, Lupo and Lawes. It is likely, too, that the music of other well-known contemporary composers, such as Dowland and Holborne, would be in use, and we can find many melodies in the masque repertoire which later appeared in the dance manuals of Playford.