Fagotto, Basson, Dulcian, Curtal ?

Album review

Yes, it's an album of bassoon music from the early seventeenth century, fabulously illustrated with a painting of a big party by Sebastian Vrancx. Perhaps not the sort of thing to knock Kelly Clarkson off the top of the charts, but an interesting exploration of the instrument with perhaps the most tangled history among the members of the modern orchestra. The title Fagotto, Bassoon, Dulcian, Curtal? refers to that history; the bassoon had multiple ancestors whose names indicated their distinguishing features, many of which came together in the modern instrument. The booklet goes into these names in quite a bit of detail, aided by illustrations from Marin Mersenne's Harmonie universelle of 1631 and Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum. The German name for the instrument, Fagott, is related indirectly to the English "faggot," or a bundle of sticks, which the bassoon was thought to resemble; the term is odd in that the actual German word, Fagott, lacks this connotation. "Bassoon" itself comes from the French words "bas son," or low sound, and refers to various outdoor instruments with double bores that preceded the bassoon. "Dulcian" (or doucaine, or dulziana) meant "sweet sound," and referred to the pleasant sound of double-bore instruments, while "curtal" was an English word meaning short and referring to some truncated double-bore ancestors of the bassoon. The buyer may hope to hear all these instruments realized in sound on the disc, but that would have been too much to ask in the absence of surviving musical evidence as to how early bassoons were used. Instead, listeners will hear bassoons of various sizes, types, and what one might call buzzing quotients, played by the group Syntagma Amici, about which nothing is said in the booklet; the ensemble also includes several small keyboard instruments. They play dances of the early seventeenth century, and arrangements of vocal music, by Banchieri, Verdelot, Susato, and Praetorius himself, interspersed with a few more virtuosic solo bassoon pieces by Phillip Friedrich Böddecker and others. Most of the music is unfamiliar, but it doesn't offer great divergences from the short dances heard on recorder-group recitals and the like. This release is likely to be of most interest to specialists, and, of course, to those who love the bassoon. Booklet notes are in French, German, and English.

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