A ROYAL CONSORT

Richard Boothby of Fretwork speaks to Robin Stowell about the ensemble’s recording of fantasias for viol consort by Thomas Lupo, the Italian who made a name for himself at Queen Elizabeth I’s court

Although not a household name, Thomas Lupo (bap.1571–d.1627) is familiar to most viol players and his compositions are especially admired by the members of Fretwork. ‘Having previously recorded examples of Lupo’s work, notably for our 2008 disc Birds on Fire,’ says Fretwork’s figurehead and founder member Richard Boothby, ‘we decided to explore and lay down some of the best of the rest of his oeuvre. We aimed to present the diversity of Lupo’s invention in his fantasias for a variety of ensembles, to showcase works that represent the quintessence of the English viol consort repertoire.’

Thomas was the most significant member of the Lupo family of Jewish musicians who served consistently at the English court from their arrival from Italy in 1540 until the outbreak of the English Civil War (1642). His father and two of his uncles had migrated from Italy at a time when Henry VIII was encouraging foreign instrumentalists, especially Italians, to settle in England and assist in improving the quality of the music making at his court. The Italian style of dance and contrapuntal music thus provided the foundations from which English viol consort music blossomed into the 17th century.

Lupo himself joined the violin consort at Queen Elizabeth I’s court in 1588 and served the royal household in various roles until his death. His substantial corpus of music for viols includes numerous fantasias in six, five, four and three parts, pavans, galliards and almands. Many of the fantasias, especially those for five and six parts, use a contrapuntal and textural style reminiscent of the madrigals of Italian composers such as Orazio Vecchi and Luca Marenzio, whose works are prominent in Nicholas Yonge’s Musica transalpina (1588 and 1597), the principal trigger for English appreciation of the madrigal.

COLOUR PHOTOS NICK WHITE

‘WE RECORDED EACH FANTASIA TWO OR THREE TIMES, WHICH ENABLED US TO SUSTAIN A COGENT MUSICAL ARGUMENT’

Sponsored by a keen amateur viol player and Lupo enthusiast, Fretwork’s recordings were captured over three days in November 2018 in a church near Boothby’s Gloucestershire home. This relatively quiet venue comfortably accommodated the players, recording engineers and their equipment and offered an acoustic with a bloom favourable to viols. ‘It’s also convenient to have overnight accommodation and home comforts close at hand,’ adds Boothby, ‘especially one’s preferred coffee blend and refreshments to fuel the proceedings! ‘The recording process was fairly straightforward, not least because Lupo’s fantasias are relatively short. We generally recorded each fantasia in its entirety at least two or three times, addressing as we went along any musical issues raised by our colleagues and producer–editor Nick Parker. Such an approach enabled us to respect the architecture of each fantasia and sustain a fluent, cogent musical argument so vital to these intricately contrapuntal pieces.’ The sectional nature of these works and their consequent natural cadences also helped to avoid any musically fractured recording approach.

Boothby thinks hard when asked which are his favourite pieces in the disc’s varied programme, but eventually opts for the four six-part fantasias. Listening to three pairs of equal instruments playing together in the richly textured no.10, it is easy to understand why. A serious, well-crafted piece with clearly contrasted sections, it juxtaposes with striking effect characteristic syncopations and suspensions, richly blended chordal passages and complex counterpoint. Boothby’s decision may also be influenced by the passages of concertante material occasionally allotted to the bass parts or the fact that former Fretwork member William Hunt joined him on the bass viol, playing a copy of a Henry Jaye instrument (1621) by Jane Julier – who also made Boothby’s. With a bod length of 766mm and an unusually extended string length of 795mm, this instrument is especially suitable as a consort bass, producing a powerful, deep tone from its thick gut strings.

The five-part fantasias sport florid treble lines and run their six-part counterparts close in musical quality and ingenuity, as evidenced by Lupo’s inventive polyphonic textures in no.29 (see bit.ly/3ua715g) and his free manipulation of the thematic material of no.35 ‘O che vezzosa’, composed after Vecchi’s madrigal O che vezzosa aurora, the sectional structure of which is reworked texturally and whose thematic material is transformed by inversion, diminution, augmentation and retrograde.

Boothby also refers to the unique viol combinations employed in Lupo’s three-part fantasias: ‘In addition to the usual treble, tenor and bass, and two trebles and bass formats, we find three basses, three trebles, two trebles and a tenor, a treble and two tenors, and two tenors and a bass. This diversity of textures is mirrored in the variety of moods and musical devices employed,’ a point amply verified by the recordings, in which the intricate contrapuntal web spun in no.8 (treble, tenor and bass) contrasts with the close scoring, partcrossing and luminosity of no.13 (three trebles) and the intensely rich sonorities of no.16 (three basses).

Fretwork, from left: Richard Boothby, Sam Stadlen, Emily Ashton, Jo Levine and Emilia Benjamin

Lupo led a double performing career in the royal household, serving as both viol player and violinist. That he and his colleagues Orlando Gibbons and John Coprario introduced the violin into contrapuntal consort music has raised questions, first posed by Thurston Dart, as to whether fantasias such as those three-part works that resemble embryonic Italian trio sonatas should be performed using violins and/or other instruments with viols. However, Fretwork has opted throughout for the homogeneous viol consort, which Boothby feels ‘works much better, especially with the larger ensembles’. The recording session experience confirmed that polyphony finds its purest expression when realised by instruments of the same family, as these can reproduce the equally weighted individual parts in ideal tonal balance and better express these pieces’ intense harmonic structure and resourceful polyphony.

Summing up Fretwork’s Lupo project, Boothby believes that viol enthusiasts will be fascinated to discern some of the cross-influences between Lupo’s works and equivalent compositions by Coprario, Gibbons and Alfonso Ferrabosco II, who worked alongside him in the royal household and developed similar working methods. Lupo’s five-and six-part fantasias closely emulate those of Gibbons as the standard model. Parallels between these composers’ three-part fantasias are also plainly evident, for example Lupo’s no.8 uses modified forms of a subject employed by composers such as Ferrabosco and Gibbons and adds contrapuntal episodes of free or related material. Boothby concludes: ‘Our biggest challenge when performing these pieces of similar style was to bring out something different in each, in order to achieve the utmost variety. We hope we’ve succeeded.’

Fretwork at the recording session in Gloucestershire

Samples of the fruits of the sessions amply demonstrate that Boothby and his colleagues have indeed stepped up to the plate.

WORKS Thomas Lupo Fantasias in three parts (nos.8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17), in five parts (nos.1, 2, 9, 10, 27, 29, 30, 31, 35), in six parts (nos.2, 5, 8, 10); Pavan no.28 in three parts (Fretwork Edition numbers) ARTISTS Fretwork with William Hunt (bass viol) RECORDING VENUE St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Sherborne, Gloucestershire, UK RECORDING DATES 5–7 November 2018 CATALOGUE NO SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD 716 RELEASE DATE 13 May 2022