Ancient Keyboard Music
nits book is a valiant attempt to bridge the gulf between musi- cologists and executant musicians. The latter, owing to the present high standard of virtuosity, have literally not much time, and, if truth be told, generally very little inclination, for research, and arc apt to take for gospel the printed page as set before them in modern editions of early music. On the other hand, musicologists are incredibly industrious researchers, and, as Mr. Bedbrook says, they have written " volume after volume " and transcribed innumer- able scores into modern notation. In this book at least a hundred and twenty writers and transcribers are mentioned.
But, strangely enough, the musicologist often contents himself with the sight of his discoveries, and seldom shows any desire to hear them performed. Hence the gulf that I spoke of a moment ago. For years I attended the meetings of a musicological society in one of the capitals of Europe without ever hearing a note of the music under discussion. Yet the researcher has his own ideas about how the music ought to go, and, in the past, he has all too often usurped the role of the interpreter by adding nineteenth- century " expression marks " and slurs to the original texts.
Mr. Bedbrook has obviously delved deeply into " volume after volume," and he gives the sources of his information in copious foot- notes and in an extensive bibliography which includes published music. But I feel that he is still unaware of the importance of providing interpreters with the original text without extraneous additions, a text that the composer of the music would not repudiate. More than half of the musical examples in the book are decorated with additional phrase marks, and, in some, ornaments have been omitted or modernised. The time has passed when it was thought necessary, in order to interpret Bach's " 48," for instance, to ask Herr Czerny or Professor So-and-So to provide " expression marks" and tempi.
The author's phraseology has at times an un-English flavour— for instance, quasi-chordal formation, virtuosic gifts, arpeggiation, florid upper voice over an elongated tenor, high Baroque. Bull's dance music sounds a bit odd, and I should like to know exactly what Mr. Bedbrook means by Hofhaimer's "open-hearted har- monies." There are very few errata, but when he speaks of Bull's " Washington " air, surely he means " Walsingham." Far-fetched analogies are also rather tiresome, as, for instance, when he calls Merulo "a sixteenth-century Chopin," and when he compares Frescobaldi's magnetic personality with that of Liszt or Paderewski. But if you can bear with these things, you will enjoy both the book and the illustrations, which are well-chosen and un-hackneyed. It is an attractive book because the author is so enthusiastic. "If Merulo is silver, Gabrieli is golden," he says ; Gabrieli's Canzoni et Sonata of 1615 " are among the finest things of all music " ; and Frescobaldi's counterpoint is " expressive to the point of mysticism." Opinions such as these whet one's curiosity.
There is a helpful list of recorded music at the end of the book, sixty-six records in all, eleven of which are duplicates. This is pitifully meagre considering the enormous output of keyboard music between circa 145o and 165o. In his preface the author expresses the hope that "after this introduction some will seek out and per- form the music for themselves." He has certainly done his best to persuade his readers that they will be richly rewarded if they explore this comparatively unknown and, in general, supposedly arid corpus of ancient keyboard music. His work is a valuable contribution to the study of this period of musical history. DOROTHY SWAINSON.
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