Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odhecaton (8/2000) / Fretwork

15世紀前半に第一線で活躍した音楽家たちの軌跡

一枚の紙に、まず現在の五線にあたる線を印刷、その後違う版を重ねて音符と言葉をその線の上に印刷した初めの人物がペトルッチでした。彼はその後多声音楽の印刷技術も発展させ、1501年に、ハルモニーチェ・ムジチェス・オデカトンAという楽譜集を出版、その後カンティB(1501/02)、C(1503/04)と続けて出版しました。ここに収められているのは、これら3つの出版楽譜中の作品を、ヴィオールの名人集団、フレットワークが発掘、再び命を吹き込んだもの。15世紀前半に活躍した音楽家達の生の音が見事に再現されています。
キングインターナショナル

Fretwork's Ottaviano Dei Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odehecaton is the first recording in 35 years to address its very important topic, the first volume of polyphonic music ever printed. Ottaviano Dei Petrucci was the inventor of a new and stylish kind of music printing the secrets of which are lost to us, and the first volume issued by his press, Harmonice Musices Odehecaton, was issued in three part-books in 1501, containing 96 pieces. This was a wide cross-section of the popular tunes leading up to that day, including works by Josquin, Obrecht, Heinrich Isaac, Alexander Agricola, and many anonymous works. As these pieces were untexted, it appears that instrumental performance was what Petrucci had in mind, though his next volume in 1503 was the first of several devoted to sacred vocal music. The quality of these prints was uncommonly high, and it would take a long time for the still nascent music printing industry to catch up in this regard. Fretwork performs a generous selection of 32 pieces from the Harmonice Musices Odehecaton and two other, related Petrucci volumes of the same, or slightly later, vintage. Recorded at Forde Abbey, Harmonia Mundi's sound is close and warm, though a tad metallic, and the sequencing of the disc pulls together several works that sound roughly the same in some spots. However, Fretwork plays these pieces beautifully and with a certain winsome charm, and Ottaviano Dei Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odehecaton is a highly engaging album to enjoy, not to mention quite soothing and pleasant to listen to.

The second half of the British Viol ensemble Fretwork's debut for Harmonia Mundi is an effort of great discipline and loving critical attention to source material -- not to mention a specially commissioned set of Renaissance viols. The program on this CD is a showcase of song settings from the Offering of Polyphonic Chansons. This selection of works by Flemish, Italian, and French Renaissance composers was assembled by Ottaviani dei Petrucci, and became the first-ever printed collection of part-music. According to the liner notes, it is because of Petrucci and his method that anything at all about early 16th century salon music is known. Petrucci devised an exacting triple process for displaying and printing music -- stave, music, text -- that is still unsurpassed. Fretwork performs with their usual crucial restraint and painstaking attention to the obscure works of major composers such as Obrecht, Isaac, Josquin, Pinarol, Agricola, Caron, and many others. Their approach to the style of music is that of Petrucci, whose notations and methods offered the notion that the singer's requirements need not be uppermost in the scoring of a work for performance. Many composers began to use this model when writing for lute or other strings, but Fretwork plays the catalog here without deference that a human voice was ever scripted into the process at all. Despite the fact that many composers used the voice melody as a model for entrance into a work, Petrucci's scoring and printing offered the primacy of the written musical text and here, in the rondeauxs, "danses chansons," and waltzes, there appears an interplay among the ensemble that extrapolates the entirety of the early 1500s and grafts it onto the sparseness of contemporary time's needs. This music is timeless, the performances stellar, and the sound so exacting you'd swear you were in the room. ~ Thom Jurek