Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices (review)

Abstract

John Travers. Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices. Edited by Emanuel Rubin. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 74.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, c2005. [Acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii-xvii; texts, p. xviii-xxi; 4 plates; score, 85 p.; crit. report, p. 87-89. ISBN 0-89579-567-1. $63.] Emanuel Rubin's claim that the Georgian part-song repertory will undoubtedly pleasure (p. ix) both singer and listener is rather hyperbolic in the context of notes for scholarly modern edition, but the assertion is nevertheless nearly sustainable. With this volume in Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, Rubin reintroduces John Travers's superb Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices (London: John Simpson, 1746), written for various combinations of two or three voice parts and continuo. Originally available by subscription purchase or through lending libraries, and sung for entertainment in private gatherings at homes or in public singing clubs, these pieces will bring pleasure in variety of present-day settings, from vocal studio, recital stage, participatory entertainment among amateurs. They would also enliven theater productions set in eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century England. Certainly, they deserve be recorded, perhaps with number of selections from the enormous and underexplored repertory which they belong (secular genres known glees, fa-las, madrigals, Neapolitans, ayres, songs, and still other appellations), or perhaps in collection arranged by topic (mythical characters, love, pastoral scenes) or devoted texts of Matthew Prior (1664-1721). Listeners, singers, and continuo players alike will be attracted by these canzonets' varied textures, alternation of syllabic and exuberant melismatic passages, counterpoint (including some artful canons), lively changes of meter, witty texts (eleven by Prior), and vivid text painting. The edition will also bring pleasure scholars in musicology and other fields who seek recover and understand the widely overlooked role of music in the culture of Georgian England. (Further historical background, bibliography, and especially useful clarification regarding nomenclature may be found in Rubin's The English Glee in the Reign of George III: Participatory An Music for an Urban Society, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, 38 [Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2003].) In his introduction the edition, Rubin helpfully summarizes the collection's ancestry. In the sixteenth century, the part-song flourished alongside the madrigal. Distinction between the two genres, in fact, was blurry: the madrigal was understood be possibly more contrapuntal, while the part-song lute accompaniment-although when sufficient voices were available, the lute was dispensable, making the part-song more madrigalian. In the seventeenth century, proliferation of singing clubs mirrored increased class mobility. You would do well, Edward Ravenscroft's Citizen Turn'd Gentleman is advised, to have Musick Club at your house, and play and sing in consort, it will much benefit you (act 1, scene 1, quoted on p. ? of the introduction). Repertoire by John Blow, Henry Purcell, and others fed the voracious appetites of these clubs, and persisted in collections into the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, even while new clubs also demanded new part-songs as fresh their food and drink (p. ix). The tradition reached the apex of its popularity in the late eighteenth century. Rubin counts more than three thousand glees alone that were published during the reign of George III (1760-1820), a number that would quadruple if the canzonets, rounds, catches, and madrigals were included (p. xi). Not only did this repertory serve an impetus for the massive explosion in London's commercial music publishing, it also brought into contact singers from different walks of life. Rubin accepts conventional wisdom here, citing Percy M. …