Two Upon a Ground
Virtuosic duets and divisions for two viols

Charivari Agréable

Susanne Heinrich - Bass & Treble Viol
Kah-Ming Ng - Bass & Treble Viol
Lynda Sayce - Guitar & Theorbo
Susanna Pell - Keyboards

Programme Notes

The peculiarly English approach to writing instrumental variations known as 'divisions' is principally known for the way it enables a player to demonstrate both a virtuosic command of the instrument and an imaginative understanding of the musical possibilities inherent in a short musical phrase. Christopher Simpson, the undisputed master of the genre, explained just how to explore such a phrase or 'ground' in his book, The Division-Violist (London 1659), which is the most important on the subject of divisions. A third edition in 1712 shows that the public's appetite for mastering the mysteries of divisions continued in the 18th century.

Simpson instructs the player first to play the ground 'plainly and distinctly' and then to embark on variations by 'dividing its Notes into more diminute Notes' or by playing a 'neat peece of slow Descant to it'. He notes the use of 'the whole Compass of the Viol' and encourages the use of a wide dynamic range and contrasts of tempo between sections, emphasising the effect of all these techniques for listeners; they are used 'to express Humour and draw on Attention'. After a full description of the instrumental and compositional techniques required for division playing, Simpson moves on to discuss divisions for more than one instrument 'in which kind of music I have had some experimental knowledge'. A manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Mus. Sch. c.59), which contains many of the pieces presented on this disc, is a dramatic demonstration that Simpson's 'experimental knowledge' was no mere tentative exploration, but the work of a master composer in a mature idiom that has become indissolubly linked with his name.

Among the encomia prefaced to the first edition of The Division-Violist was one from another outstanding English composer, John Jenkins. He is represented by a set of divisions in C major on this recording and by further excellent compositions in c.59. Jenkins dedicated his words 'To his Excellent Friend Mr. Christopher Simpson, upon his most acurate Treatise of Division to a Ground' and berated other theorists who 'not one Ragg of Musick have'. Despite the essentially improvisatory, and hence ephemeral, nature of divisions, significant works by composers other than Simpson and Jenkins have survived. Yet Jenkins' prediction that the 'False finger'd Crew' would find their trade decay while 'Simpsons great Work will teach the World to Play' has proved remarkably prescient.

The Division-Violist contains plenty of guidance for divisions to be played by two or three viols, in which Simpson takes account of how one player might have a greater 'ability of Hand' than another. If they are equal, he recommends the violists to alternate the higher and lower parts so as to share the leading and answering of the dividing. The organist may participate by dividing that part, and at such times the violists are reminded that the slow notes should be soft and that 'that Part which Divides should always be heard lowdest'. Sometimes they should be 'all engaged at once in a contest of Division. But (after all) ending commonly in grave and harmonious Musick'. Simpson explains that few divisions are published because of the particularly high cost for that sort of music. He emphasises further the improvisatory nature of divisions in his report that extemporisations by players familiar with one another's styles have been received with greater applause 'than those Divisions which had been most studiously composed'.

The view of Matthew Locke regarding Simpson's rivals, resembles that of Jenkins: 'How have the Learned Theoricks of their Ages / Burd'ned the World with Volumes; When Three Pages / Form'd by your Nobler Muse, have given Us more / Then They, or Knew, or Saw, or Heard before!'. However, Locke's pieces for two bass viols are in an idiom far removed from the divisions of Jenkins or Simpson. Most of the twelve duos are fantazias and a few are dance movements. These are from a generation accustomed to treating such forms as entirely idiomatic instrumental music, a distinct change since the beginning of the century when instrumental dances could still be used to accompany dancers. Locke was one of the last Englishmen to leave a significant corpus of viol consort music but his bass viol duos have a mid-century feel which is stylistically distinct from the Jacobean and Caroline repertory and yet does not anticipate the late Baroque. Some of Locke's music is a mild cousin of the extraordinary work of William Lawes. Lawes' five- and six-part consort music stands out in its genre for its combination of bizarre figures with harmonies that are by turns frightening and as intensely sweet as the finest Sauternes wine. It is difficult to forget the divisions of this G minor suite when playing the more restrained four-part consort version. 

Gottfried 'Godfrey' Finger, who was of Moravian origin, had a successful career in England where he served from 1687 at the chapel of James II. He stayed in England after his employer fled in 1688, but returned to the continent after coming only fourth in a composition contest held in 1700. Like Locke (and like Lawes, if masque music is included), Finger wrote extensively for the theatre, as well as pure instrumental music, but in contrast to Locke's duos, many of his pieces for the viol make extensive technical demands on the player and their style reflects the preoccupations of his later generation.

Little is known about the enigmatic Tobias Hume apart from his military profession (he was a soldier who served in various armies, including those of Sweden and Russia), and that he died in the Charterhouse almshouse in poor mental health. Hume considered that his music was 'the onely effeminate part of me', and yet that it was 'Generous, because never Mercenarie'. He used the introduction to his 1605 publication to promote his campaign for the viol to have equal status with the lute because the '...Gambo Violl, shall with ease yeelde full various and as deuicefull Musicke as the Lute. For here I protest the Trinitie of Musicke, parts, Passion and Division, to be as gracefully united in the Gambo Violl, as in the most received Instrument there is'. We should thank Hume for this nice expression of the essentials of 17th century English instrumental music, which we can also use to describe the pieces presented on this recording: 'parts, Passion and Division'.

Michael Fleming 1998

In addition to presenting first recordings of some divisions by Simpson (numbers 1 & 4) and Jenkins (number 21) this disc features three instruments of considerable interest. The harpsichord was built by Andreas Ruckers (Antwerp 1623), the younger son of Hans the Elder, founder of the formidable and famous Ruckers dynasty of harpsichord makers. It was originally a standard transposing double manual (upper: C/E - c3; lower: GG/BB - f3) with a disposition of 1x8' and 1x4' stops. This remarkably preserved instrument seems to have been played right through the Romantic era and survives with many 18th-century strings dating from the grand ravalement of ca. 1770 by Jacob Kirckman, who veneered the case with mahogany in the fashionable English taste of the time. The bentside spinet (London ca. 1680) by the most prolific of the late 17th-century English spinet makers, Stephen Keene, has a compass of GG/BB - d3 with split accidentals. It has an elaborate original stand, and the original jacks and cloth padding on the keyframe are still present in the instrument.

The theorbo used is not the normal Italian instrument but a reconstruction of a characteristically English type, double-strung throughout and tuned in G with only one re-entrant course. It was built by David Van Edwards (Norwich 1995), and is based on measurements in the Talbot manuscript (ca. 1700) and descriptions in Thomas Mace's Musick's Monument (London 1676). Further details of this instrument can be found in articles by Lynda Sayce in Early Music Review (March 1995) and Early Music (November 1995).

No solo music survives for the English theorbo in this tuning, but Thomas Mace tells us that music may be arranged for it: '...you may Play Lessons upon It as Compleatly, as upon the French Lute; provided They be Lessons proper, and becoming the Gravity of This Instrument; (for it is very Improper to Play Light and Jiggish Things upon It)...' Ennemond 'le Vieux' Gaultier's La Pompe Funebre (The Funeral) seemed apposite because of its obvious gravity, and because of the popularity of his music in England. A description of Gaultier, by the lute teacher of Mary Burwell, (ca. 1670) well conveys the regard in which he was held: 'Many musicall Lights have risen in France amongst whom a single one as the Sun among the Starres hath drawen the admiration and the praises of all the world. It is the first Gaultier who is named in regard of his age and his meritt old Gaultier to which fortune not soo deafe as blind hastened and through the liberality of Kings Queenes and other Princes Crowned with honour and fulfilled with Riches'.

Lynda Sayce & Kah-Ming Ng 1998