Alison Crum - Spagna in the Works

A Spagna in the Works The sweetly modest, satisfying, and gentle sonority of domestic music-making in the renaissance quietly belies compositions of unsurpassed musical skill. Featuring music that may be enjoyed equally either as something pleasantly light in the background, or more attentively as something more serious and profound, this new CD of music centred around the mid 16th century is performed on the viol (bowed like a violin or cello, but far more tender, placid, and humane) accompanied by the lute (plucked like a guitar, but more calm, courteous and modest) and, like a mesmeric, draws the listener into worlds that are almost unimaginable, and certainly almost forgotten. It is the result of more than twenty years of a duo partnership between Alison Crum and her husband Roy Marks. Together they have collected a large number of historical copies of various instruments, both blowed and bowed as well as plucked, from which they are able to choose the ones most appropriate for a repertoire ranging from the late 15th to the late 18th century. But in their search for the particular sound which inspired the elegantly crafted compositions that make up the ethereal world of music-making in the renaissance they have also experimented with makers' ideas on the construction and stringing of each of the various instruments. The title of the CD is a pun on the British expression, A spanner in the works (tipping a wink to John Lennon's book, A Spaniard in the Works), and includes 11 settings of the basse dance melody, La Spagna. La Spagna was the tenor line moving in slow notes around which composers and performers constructed and improvised counterpoint well into the 17th century. The CD also includes music by Ortiz, Ruffo, Festa, Rore, Rognoni, and a dozen other even less known composers, and ends with two pieces written by Roy himself. Review quotes: 'This delightful CD gives an insight into the special, ethereal world of serious music-making in the renaissance period. It is an intimate, sophisticated sound for the privileged, cultivated listener.' The Viol 'Recordings of later viol music often try to cover or minimize the sound of the articulation of the bow, but this recording embraces it as an essential and beautiful component of the music ... The variety of colors that Alison produces from all the viols is astonishing ...' Viola da Gamba Society of America News '... a recording of sensitivity, clarity and warmth ... The final track (Roy's Lullaby) creates a mood leaving us somewhere between a hypnotic trance and suspended in mid-air (making) the perfect conclusion to an imaginatively constructed programme, skilfully realised and expertly recorded.' Thamesis Alison Crum is well-known throughout the Western World both as a player and teacher of the viol. As well as her recording of the Bach Gamba Sonatas with Laurence Cummings, she has made nearly one hundred recordings with some of Britain's finest early music groups, including The Consort of Musicke, The Taverner Players, The King's Consort, and many with the Rose Consort of Viols. She is President of the Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain, Professor of Viol at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, and a visiting teacher at several colleges and universities both in Europe and the USA. Alison is the author of two highly acclaimed books on playing the viol, and has been called the doyenne of British viol teachers, directing numerous summer schools and workshops worldwide. Roy Marks is Alison's husband. More widely interested in the Arts than his wife, he studied the piano as a child in the 50s, played lead guitar in a pop group in the 60s, studied at art school (graduating from the Royal Academy in London in 1975 where he studied painting and drawing), and in the early 80s studied classical guitar at the Guildhall in London. He taught painting and drawing between 1977 and 1988, but in 1984 turned his attention almost exclusively to early music - to the recorder, the viol, and later, the lute. He performs with the Rose Consort of Viols, regularly teaches on workshops in England, Germany, Italy, and the U.S.A., and composes music for period instruments.