Lute Music (The Balcarres Lute Book A 17Th Century Scottish Manuscript)

Sylvain Bergeron

Released on 2008-05-01 by ATMA Classique
Main artists: Sylvain Bergeron
Genre: Classical

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The Balcarres Lute Book is a rather mysterious document owned by the Lindsay family, a Scots noble line of a fiefdom called Balcarres. It includes pieces for an 11-course lute, played here by French Canadian lutenist Sylvain Bergeron on a 13-course instrument. Although the cover of the album, in a major failure of editorial procedure, dates it to the seventeenth century, the booklet places it in the early eighteenth. It is a collection of dances and tunes, often with a few variations. The origins of the music are not clearly attributed, and precisely in that lack of clarity lies one of the album's points of interest. Many of the titles consist of three parts. Consider track 2, listed in the book as When she came in she boobed, mr McLaughlans way, by mister Beck. The first mystery, what she did when she boobed, is unfortunately not addressed in the booklet. And nobody is quite sure about "mr McLaughlans way" or "by mister Beck," either. The theory developed by historian Matthew Spring (and summarized by Luisa Trisi) holds that Scottish music of this period occupied a unique intermediate space between oral and written traditions. It's not clear who Mister Beck was, but he could have been a lute teacher in Edinburgh, and he likely arranged much of the music for lute. The "mr McLaughlan" would then, in Spring's reasoning, have been a player or singer from whom Beck heard the music, performing an existing tune in a characteristic way. Other tunes are attributed to Beck himself, to other apparently Scottish composers, or to the French lutenists Mouton and Gallot; the booklet also questions these attributions. For the general listener it is the multicultural quality of the music that will probably be most interesting. Many pieces have the distinctive Scots pentatonic scale and a few have the syncopated "Scottish snap" rhythm, but others show French and Italian influences. The Scottish pieces have a delightful and moving simplicity; as Trisi puts it, the Balcarres versions in many cases "are more attractive and distinctive than the later, often highly artificial and self-consciously Scottish versions." Incidentally, the final tune entitled For old long syne bears little resemblance to the familiar Robert Burns New Year's Eve number. Bergeron has a lightly lyrical style that works especially well with the Scottish pieces, and the music is logically organized into short suites of from three to five pieces linked by musical considerations or simply the conceits of their titles. The recording is ideal, bringing the listener up close to Bergeron but not seeming to be in his face. Especially recommended for listeners interested in the relationship between oral and written traditions and between Scottish "folk" and "art" music, this recording will also appeal to the general run of lute lovers and of Scots music fans.

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Lute Music (The Balcarres Lute Book A 17Th Century Scottish Manuscript)

Sylvain Bergeron

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