Customer Reviews

Dario Castello: Sonate Concertate in Stil Moderno

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Probably like most people I hadn't heard of Dario Castello until I chanced upon this CD.

So much for modern style sonate Concertantes, these are very pleasing sonatas orchestrated for a variety of instruments, and which are easy on the ear but not overly simple. I particularly like the brass passages with the echoed responses in the latter half of the disc. The mix of instruments gives the music a distinct sound which belies its' period.

For those of you who like the Italian baroque. This is a feast! You can think of Castello as an Italian version of Telemann. His music is very progressive and modern sounding yet simple and clean. The life and vitality of performance is stunning by this somewhat obscure group: Musica Fiorita.

This isn't at all what one expects in picking up an early baroque CD. Castello blows Monteverdi out of the water! Great stuff, more playful and open than Corelli. I wish there were more Castello for me to find!

Perhaps Dario Castello considered himself such, since he labeled his works "in stil moderno" - in a modern style. "First" of anything musical is awfully hard to prove, but Castello was certainly among the "first" composers in European music to be an instrumentalist by training and career rather than a singer. There had been earlier composers whose singing skills were not prominent, whose instrument was the lute rather than the voice, but Castello was a wind player, most likely a cornettist. His obscure career in Venice consisted of directing a wind band! Unfortunately nothing more is known about Castello, or about the sort of gigs his "Compagnia di Musichi d'Instrumenti da Fiato" performed.

"Musica Fiorita" isn't exclusively a "wind" ensemble. Only the two virtuosic cornetto players, Frithjof Smith and Gebhard David are windy; the other eight musicians all pluck or bow or hammer strings: two violins, gamba, cello, double harp, psaltery played with mallets, guita/theorbo, and harpsichord, played by director Daniela Dolci. They are all musicians of the highest caliber, most pof them trained at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, the "Harvard and Yale" of historically informed performance.

Smith and Gebhard are also heard on the double-CD of Castello and his contemporary Biagio Marini from the great ensemble "La Fenice". That ensemble is directed by Jean Tubery, also a cornetto virtuoso. If I believed in transmigration of souls, I'd strongly suspect that Tubery is the living reincarnation of dario Castello, but either Smith or Gebhard could also serve that role. I reviewed the La Fenice performance just yesterday. For the sake of efficiency, I'll quote the gist of my own review:

There was a 'continental divide' in musical history around 1600. The music of the Medieval/Renaissance composers was preponderately "vocal" music. The preeminent musical forms were the a capella polyphonic masses and motets, and even the secular repertoire was dominated by chansons, tenor-Lieder, madrigals, music to be sung. Instruments were second-class citizens of the 'prima prattica' demesne, employed in supportive roles, for ceremonials, etc. The oeuvres of the greatest and most prolific composers -- Dufay, Josquin, Lassus, etc. -- were almost entirely vocal and largely instrument-free. The composers themselves were principally singers, trained as singers and often earning their livings as singers. The instruments themselves exhibited their subordination; they were of limited range, limited dynamics (either LOUD or soft), chiefly diatonic and unwieldy about their sharps and flats. The most able instrumentalists customarily drew on the vocal repertory of motets and chansons for their performances. Undoubtedly there was a lot of instrumental music -- anonymous, improvised, 'occasional' -- that hasn't survived, but even if the sources are skewed, the overall impression must remain that voices ruled.

Claudio Monteverdi's "second practice" conceded a role to instruments that elevated them to essential partnership with voices. The 'basso continuo' belonged to the lute, the harp, the harpsichord, and the bowed strings, and those instruments evolved precipitously to serve their new role. The six-course Renaissance lute became the 14-course theorbo. The cello and the bass gamba escaped their smaller colleagues of the 'closed consort'. The harpsichord became the quintessential 'continuo' instrument, a role for which it was superbly appropriate and which it continued to serve until the operas of Rossini.
But Monteverdi's "second practice" of texted recitativo and continuo wasn't the whole story. His era was also that of the Gabrielis and other composers who devoted a large share of their artistry to compositions specifically for instrument-only ensembles. Instrumental music came to the fore especially in North Italy. Who could have imagined, in 1600, that the "future" of music belonged to the instruments, and that the human voice would be obliged to imitate them rather than vice-versa? But it's so, isn't it? The "greatest works" of the "greatest composers" of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries have been the symphonies, concertos, string quartets, and keyboard solos. Imagine it as a swing of the pendulum, if you will, from singers to instrumentalists. Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and beyond: virtually every composer of importance since 1650 has been an instrumentalist foremost and singer in the shower.

The instruments that pushed or pulled this transition were the cornetto and the violin, instruments of astounding virtuosic potential. They existed in implicit competition throughout most of the 17th C, and they were often paired in exhibitions of their artistry. Dario Castello was probably a Venetian. His birth and death dates are unknown, but he was certainly a contemporary of Biagio Marini and Francesco Cavalli. The demands of his music upon the cornettists are formidable, well beyond the abilities of all but a dozen or so humans alive today. The two cornettists on this Tactus CD are among that illustrious dozen.