Treasury of a Saint

Album review

This "Treasury of a Saint" pertains to St. Cecilia only in the most general way, as regards to her capacity as patron saint of music, and, more specifically, as namesake of the Dutch historical-instrument ensemble heard here. The disc includes works from the first flowering of independent instrumental music in the early and middle seventeenth century. The key issue for this repertoire does not always depend on the specific instruments played -- the instrumental sonata (meaning simply "something played," as opposed to "cantata," sung) was in its infancy, and the sonatas heard here, such as the Sonata la Monica for dulcian (track 10) of Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, were pioneer works. The broadest trait giving a piece its character was its relationship, or lack thereof, to vocal models. Some pieces, whether played on keyboard or by a small ensemble, reproduced polyphonic vocal works closely. Others were independent of vocal models; these works, often marked by the use of a continuo, might be interludes of parts of some larger vocal work (such as an opera). In between these two poles was a genre that went by various names -- division, diminution, or others. Such pieces have been neglected, even in early music circles, but they were part and parcel of court life in the seventeenth century for decades. As the names imply, the composer would diminish or divide the note values of a vocal piece into smaller units, creating a more instrumentally idiomatic piece suitable for performer display. The growth of the variation genre was closely bound up with these; examples here are tracks 12 and 15. A few composers on this disc -- Sweelinck, Cabanilles -- are familiar, but most are quite obscure; they were court composers across Europe, often with partly ecclesiastical functions, and the Caecilia-Concert performs a service by giving the music a first hearing. For many listeners, the most intriguing aspect of the recording will be the unfamiliar sounds of the instruments themselves (replicas of historical examples) -- the gentle, bassoon-like dulcian, the wooden cornetto muto, and various other horns and keyboards. The sound is both warmer and quieter than that of the modern brass quintet, the usual repository for the ensemble pieces on this disc. A worthwhile offbeat choice (on Ton Koopman's Antoine Marchand label) for the listener who enjoys the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, Heinrich Schütz, or the other monumental innovators of the early Baroque.

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