William Lawes - Consorts in Four and Five Parts

PHANTASM

Lawes

Awards

Gramophone Editor's choice

Diapason 5

La Sélection des Meilleures Prises de Son

Goldberg 5 stars

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Editions consulted (1) William Lawes, Consort Sets in Five and Six Parts, ed. David Pinto, London: Faber, 1979. (2) Forthcoming edition of Lawes, For the Violls a4 by Mark Davenport (with thanks to the editor for making this available to us) Warning. Exposure to the consort music of William Lawes (1602-1645) is known to cause an addiction that can be difficult to cure. The symptoms? (1) An obsessive desire to play or hear Lawes at odd times of day; (2) a compulsive humming of snatches from the Fantazys and Aires; (3) unexplained melancholia connected to certain harmonic twists. At least this has been my experience with Lawes, though it wasnt always the case. When first playing Lawes, I found his music inscrutable, bizarre, and anarchic. Jamming one summer afternoon in 1975 with some eminent Lawesians who had assembled in Cambridge, I was counting like mad so as not to get lost in Lawes 6-part Setts and scarcely noticed Francis Baines repeated requests between pieces to borrow my rosin. I obliged but, ignorant of English circumlocution, failed to appreciate the meaning of his gesture. After an hour or so of an obscure game of pass the rosin, the young woman on my right was kind enough to whisper: Francis thinks youre playing too loud. Point taken. Yet my own part was so wildly interesting and so apparently at odds with everyone elses - that it seemed a pity to give others a chance to be heard. What is more, my unintentional rudeness helped drown the chaos I heard around me: all those craggy melodies, awkward imitations, wilful contrapuntal errors and strange harmonies, not to mention that even seasoned players of Lawes had trouble keeping it all together. This was genuinely confusing music. To make sense of Lawes - Ive since discovered one has to crack his code. This means succumbing to his genial deviousness whilst also taking the time to characterize a range of feelings unique to him. For me, this has become the only way that Lawes pre-eminence in early 17th-century chamber music will become recognized for the dazzling and dangerous music it is. Any viol player will tell you that the sensation of weaving in and out of Lawes elaborate embroidery is quite unlike any other one can think of. But even for listeners confronted with the whole fabric, Lawes offers unparalleled pleasures. For whilst he is crafting the most complex set of audible, overlapping dialogues, he is also compelling the harmonic motion forward like a master coachman driving a team of trusty steeds. Lawes consorts arent all darkness and doom. The pure pastoral sunniness found in the Paven in F (Track 5) is matchless, but, like so many great composers Purcell or Bach, for example- Lawes cannot help adding in painful dissonances which cast tragic shadows. He also knows how to revel in playfulness as in the Fantazys and Aires in C and F (Tracks 4, 6, 11, 13) in which the pleasure of making music with a group of congenial friends is turned into a topic of invention. And for all his attraction to complexity, Lawes unexpectedly has something glorious to say about innocence, as in the opening and closing of the Paven in C (Track 12). This is music that rejoices in its diatonic naivete. Lawes most sublime inspirations, though, inhabit the realm of sadness, pain and loss, even in the major mode. He is unafraid of bleakness and gloom, and of introducing the most unlikely, angular, and even ugly subjects into the counterpoint, as in all the Fantazys in minor. And he can be harsh and uncompromising once he has committed himself to austerity, as in the stark contours of On the Playnsong (Track 15), not based on any recognizable chant, this despite including some heart-wrenching glimpses of hope. (These are also heard in the Paven in c (Track 9), an almost unbearably beautiful homage to Dowlands tragic set of pavanes based on Flow my tears.) What is striking about Lawes despair, though, is that it is projected so often in a torrent of quick notes and dense imitations. The rhythmic, dance-like vitality, even jerkiness, of this music is often overwhelming in its effect. Listen, for example, to the cascades of falling arpeggios toward the end of the Fantazy in c, the dotted figures in the last strain of the Paven in F, the surging scales near the end of the second Fantazy in a, or the country fiddling that accompanies the crass pedal tones at the end of Aire in Ca5 (Tracks 7, 5, 2, 13). Lawes is a wonder. I hope listeners dont need 25 years to be bitten by the bug. Laurence Dreyfus 2000

Additional Information

Main artist	PHANTASM
Composer	Lawes
Inlay	W. Lawes Consorts in Four and Five parts Set a5 in a; Set a5 in F; Set a5 in c; Set a5 in C; Set a5 in g; For the Violls A4: Fantazy in c (VdGS #108); Aire [Fantazy] in C (VdGS #111); Aire in c (VdGS #109); Aire in C (VdGS #112); Aire in c (VdGS #110); Aire in C (VdGS #113) (period performance)
Biography	PHANTASM, a quartet of viols, catapulted into prominence when their debut recording of Purcell won a Gramophone Award for the Best Baroque Instrumental Recording of 1997. Since then, they have become recognized as the most exciting viol consort active on the international scene. Critics have called their performances and recordings: intoxicating, revelatory, electrifying, interpretations pervaded by a truly burning spirit. Based in London, PHANTASM maintains an active concert life throughout Europe and America, breathing new life into English consort music as well as creating a dynamic rehearing of music by JS Bach. The quartet has issued four discs on Simax Classics (music by Purcell, Byrd and Bach), and another on the Global Music Network (Matthew Locke). This CD marks their first record for Channel Classics. PHANTASM maintains websites at [www.phantasm.org.uk] and at [www.gmn.com] where they can be seen rehearsing some of the pieces heard on this disc. Laurence Dreyfus, founder of PHANTASM, was born in Boston (USA) and pursues a dual career as performer and writer on music. He has published extensively on the music of JS Bach, including Bachs Continuo Group (Harvard University Press, 1986) and Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Harvard University Press, 1996), which won the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society. Laurence Dreyfus makes his home in London where he holds the Thurston Dart Chair of Performance Studies at Kings College London. His recordings of Bach and Marais with harpsichordist Ketil Haugsand on Simax Classics have received critical acclaim and their recording of Rameau's Pices de clavecin en concert was nominated for a 1994 Gramophone award. Dreyfus can also be heard in a CD of Purcell songs on the Philips label with Sylvia McNair, which won a Grammy for the best vocal recording of 1995. Wendy Gillespie was educated at Wellesley College, the Amsterdam Conservatory and at New York University. She has been a distinguished performer of medieval, Renaissance and baroque stringed instruments for over 20 years, based in New York City, then England, and currently Bloomington, where she is Professor at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University and teaches performance practice, notation and early strings. She has appeared all over the world with ensembles from the New York Pro Musica Antiqua and Ensemble for Early Music to Ensemble Sequentia, Taverner Players, and Theatre of Voices. Her special interest is the viol and its ensemble literature; she is a founding member of Les Filles de Ste-Colombe and Fretwork. Gillespie has participated in more than 50 recordings for Virgin Classics, Harmonia Mundi, EMI, BIS, Simax and other labels and has fulfilled her adolescent dream of making a record with Sir Paul McCartney. Jonathan Manson was born in Edinburgh and received his formative training at the International Cello Centre in Scotland under the direction of Jane Cowan, and was later taught by Steven Isserlis and David Waterman in London and Steven Doane at the Eastman School of Music. While in America, he became involved with the performance of early music and from there went to the Hague to study viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken. As a period instrument performer, Jonathan Manson plays and records regularly with the Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert and many other leading early music ensembles. He has made numerous recordings for Erato, Decca, Chandos, Naxos and Simax Classics, and is principal cellist of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Markku Luolajan-Mikkola studied cello with Arto Noras at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki which awarded him its diploma in 1983. An interest in baroque music led him to the Hague where he studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory receiving postgraduate diplomas in viola da gamba and baroque cello. Markku Luolajan-Mikkola currently teaches at the Sibelius Academy and is active as a chamber musician in several European ensembles. His recording from 1994 of Marais Suite d'un got tranger on ALBA Records won a national award for excellence in his native Finland and other solo CDs have likewise garnered critical acclaim, including discs of virtuoso viol music by Antoine Forqueray, Marais' second book of viol pieces, and JS Bach's gamba sonatas, the latter two issued by BIS. A special interest of Luolajan-Mikkolas is contemporary music commissioned for the bass viol. Guest performer: Sarah Cunningham was born in the USA and began her viol studies in Boston. She went on to work with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Since 1981 she has made her home in London. There she became a founder member with Monica Huggett of the baroque ensemble Trio Sonnerie, with whom she recorded extensively and toured throughout the world. As a soloist she has released three CDs, a disc of Marais on ASV, a collection of solo viol music for Virgin Classics/EMI, and a second disc of unaccompanied music for the Swedish label Seagull Records. She was invited by flautist James Galway to participate in his recordings of Bachs flute works, and has toured with him in Europe and the USA. Cunningham is professor of viola da gamba at the Hochschule fr Knste, Bremen and makes her home on the west coast of Ireland.
Awards	Awards: Editors Choice Gramophone/ Goldberg: 5 stars/ Recording of the 2002 Medieval / renaissance recordings/ 10/10 classics today/ choc du Monde de la Musique
Quotes	() Phantasm play wonderfully richly without an organ, but the ensemble, tuning, balance and clarity of the viols is superb. () Early Music () Een gamba-consort klinkt met zijn heldere, kleine volume als musicerende engelen. Het ensemble Phantasm bestaat uit zulke musicierende engelen, want zij spelen de muziek van Lawes beeldschoon. Algemeen Dagblad () draws the listener into a world of sound which Dreyfus himself describes as inscrutable, bizarre and anarchic. () Phantasms spirited playing blows all the cobwebs away, and readers will find that they need no multi-syllable password to the wholehearted enjoyment of this wonderful music. BBC Music Magazine () the performances, technically and stylistically superb, are also intellectually and musical persuative.() () This recording sets new standards for consort playing. We must hope for more. Gramophone () For those addicted to Lawes consort music (and for those who are not), this is not to be missed. Early Music Review () some of the most serious but also most adventurous music Lawes ever wrote () () Phantasm emphasize the musics essential vigour. () Inernational Record Review
Format	Normal PCM CD
Running time	66:50
Year of release	2000
Number of cd's	1

Number of cd's:

Year of release:

2000

Running time:

66:50

Quotes:

() Phantasm play wonderfully richly without an organ, but the ensemble, tuning, balance and clarity of the viols is superb. () Early Music

() Een gamba-consort klinkt met zijn heldere, kleine volume als musicerende engelen. Het ensemble Phantasm bestaat uit zulke musicierende engelen, want zij spelen de muziek van Lawes beeldschoon. Algemeen Dagblad

() draws the listener into a world of sound which Dreyfus himself describes as inscrutable, bizarre and anarchic. () Phantasms spirited playing blows all the cobwebs away, and readers will find that they need no multi-syllable password to the wholehearted enjoyment of this wonderful music. BBC Music Magazine

() the performances, technically and stylistically superb, are also intellectually and musical persuative.() () This recording sets new standards for consort playing. We must hope for more. Gramophone

() For those addicted to Lawes consort music (and for those who are not), this is not to be missed. Early Music Review () some of the most serious but also most adventurous music Lawes ever wrote () () Phantasm emphasize the musics essential vigour. () Inernational Record Review

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