(C 9605) Schiarazula Marazula
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The music and the composers So, as most of the other Mainerio's pieces contained in our recording, it was not actually written by him at all; he rather assembled and arranged some of the most popular dances of his time (of different countries, for in our disc there are dances from Italy, Germany, Hungary, England or France that were frequently used and danced in Italy) and presented them in one of the most original collections of the century. Together with Mainerio's output we shall find the ravishing pieces from the Munich Manuscript (XVIth centtury, but containing sometimes much older melodies) and a handful pieces of Carlo Farina, one of the first virtuoso violinists, who before leaving his homeland wrote some inspired collections of dances "to be played with violins or other instruments" The performers French group Musica Antiqua is well know by record collectors. But, in this occasion, we have completely changed personnel, to give the group a dramatically new sound: musicians from France, Hungary, Switzerland, United States and Italy perform with astonishing energy and power (or, when required, with deep inspiration and moving melancholy) this colourful music. The result is that even the best known pieces of the disc will sound new, fresh and surprising. Musica Antiqua Fernand Charpentier, Marguerite Humber, Jean-Charles
Lorgoulloux*, Dominique Gauthier**, recorders, crumhorns, *percussion,
** traverso C 9605 Schiarazula Marazula Already available. |
According
to latest research, the dance which gives title to our disc, Schiarazula
Marazula, a most impresive and mysterious piece, was a song-dance inserted
in an arcaic and complex pseudo-religious ritual. Dancers (and possibly
singers as well) would invoke rain on the night of Pentecost at around
midnight. The ritual would be gaining intensity (and, somehow, a number
of dangerous components) with the years, and by 1624 the patriarchal
Inquisition was called for intervention against it.