Piffarissimo - Instrumental music at the Council of Constance 1414-1418 by Capella de la Torre / Katharina Bäuml

Capella de la Torre / Katharina Bäuml

Piffarissimo - Instrumental music at the Council of Constance 1414-1418

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917263121
Catnr: CC 72631
Release date: 25 February 2014

1 CD

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917263121

Catalogue number
CC 72631

Release date
25 February 2014

""A rich conjuring of pomp and ceremony from a defining time...of the power and potency of medieval music...But if you're already a covert, this one is for you.""

EOS Classical Music, 01-6-2015

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

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About the album

In the years 1414-1418 the largest congress of the Middle Ages took place in Constance: the 16th Council for the election of a pope. It was also the only papal election in Germany. Constance was selected because it was episcopal residence, had sufficient accomodations and suitable buildings and rooms for the meetings. In the city, which numbered 6000 inhabitants, 72 000 guests stayed during the Council. The meetings were framed by church services and various celebrations that were naturally enriched with music. According to contemporary sources at least 365 instrumentalists stayed in the town. With ensembles consisting of shawm, sackbut/slide trumpet and trombone they emballished all occasions with festive music. Their representative function just took advantage of the more important rulers who brought their own chapels. The wind ensembles were supplemented by percussion or string instruments, as mentioned from a poem by Oswald von Wolkenstein. The South Tyrolean poet, knight and diplomat also stayed in Constance during the council. He is an indispensable witness.

During the Holy Mass the help of the Holy Spirit was implored by the hymn "Veni creator spiritus" or the sequence "Veni sancte spiritus".

The ensemble Capella della Torre has discovered these facts on his search and developed the idea of a musical retrospective of this important historical event. Since the sources never mentioned the names of composers, Capella delle Torre chose for the program the CD first anonymous works. According to the traditional style diversity during the Council also compositions of later masters were involved as well as two songs of Oswald von Wolkenstein. Dances, entertaining songs stand next to solemn or impressive ostentatious pieces. Spiritual melodies were arranged for the instrumental ensemble.

2014-2018, the Council of Constance marks the 600th Time. The city is celebrating this anniversary as an event with Europe-wide broadcasting. Lectures and exhibitions, scientific symposiums and festivals, a wide media presence and an international press work, the involvement of European partner cities and the invitation of high government officials and religious dignitaries move the council anniversary from 2014 for five years in the light of the international public.

Een muzikale terugblik op een belangrijke historische gebeurtenis
Van 1414 tot 1418 vond het grootste congres van de Middeleeuwen plaats in Constance: het zestiende Concilie voor de verkiezing van de Paus. De bijeenkomsten werden omlijst door kerkdiensten en vieringen die verrijkt werden met muziek. Er verbleven minstens 365 instrumentalisten in de stad, die op alle gelegenheden feestelijke muziek speelden op schalmeien, trombones en schuiftrompetten. Belangrijke heersers brachten ook hun musici mee. Dichter, ridder, en diplomaat Oswald von Wolkenstein was hier getuige van, en beschreef de muziek in een gedicht.

Het ensemble Capella della Torre, bestaande uit musici die hun naam hebben gemaakt in de historische uitvoeringspraktijk, heeft deze feiten ontdekt tijdens hun zoektocht. Dit album vormt een muzikale terugblik op het Concilie. Het ensemble koos eerst anonieme werken uit, omdat er in de bronnen geen namen van componisten werden genoemd. Op het album staat daarnaast ook de rijke en tot nu toe weinig uitgevoerde muziek van middeleeuwse componisten als Philippe de Virty, Guillaume Dufay, Oswald von Wolkenstein en Gille Binchois. Dansen en vermakelijke liederen staan naast plechtige en opzichtige werken. De geestelijke melodieën werden bewerkt voor het instrumentale ensemble.

In 2014-2018 vindt de 600-jarige viering van het Concilie van Constance plaats. Het jubileum wordt gevierd met lezingen, tentoonstellingen, symposia en festivals.

In den Jahren 1414 bis 1418 fand in Konstanz der größte Kongress des Mittelalters statt: das 16. ökumenische Konzil zur Wahl eines Papstes. Es war zugleich die einzige Papstwahl auf deutschem Boden. Konstanz wurde ausgewählt, weil es zum einen Bischofssitz war, über ausreichend Herbergen sowie entsprechende Gebäude und Räume für die Versammlungen verfügte. In der Stadt, die 6000 Einwohner zählte, weilten während des Konzils 72 000 Gäste. Die Zusammenkünfte wurden von Gottesdiensten und vielfältigen Feiern umrahmt, die selbstverständlich mit Musik bereichert wurden. Dazu waren laut zeitgenössischer Quellen mindestens 365 Instrumentalisten am Ort. Mit Ensembles bestehend aus Schalmei, Altpommer und Zugtrompete/ Posaune untermalten sie alle Anlässe mit feierlicher Musik. Ihre repräsentative Funktion nutzten gerade die bedeutenderen Herrscher, die ihre eigenen Kapellen mitbrachten. Die Bläserensembles wurden einerseits durch Perkussion, andererseits durch Saiteninstrumente ergänzt und kontrastiert, wie aus einem Gedicht des Oswald von Wolkenstein deutlich wird. Der Südtiroler Dichter, Ritter und Diplomat weilte ebenfalls in Konstanz und ist unverzichtbarer Zeitzeuge.

Neben der Instrumentalmusik wurde in den Messen wiederholt der Beistand des Heiligen Geistes erfleht, etwa mit dem Hymnus „Veni creator spiritus“ oder der Sequenz „Veni sancte spiritus“.

Das Ensemble Capella della Torre hat auf seiner Spurensuche diese Gegebenheiten entdeckt und die Idee einer musikalischen Rückschau auf ein bedeutendes historisches Ereignis entwickelt. Da in den Quellen nie Komponisten erwähnt werden, wählte Capella delle Torre für das Programm der CD zunächst anonyme Werke aus. Entsprechend der überlieferten Stilvielfalt während des Konzils wurden auch Kompositionen späterer Meister eingebunden sowie zwei Lieder des Oswald von Wolkenstein. Tänzerisch unterhaltsame Lieder stehen neben feierlichen oder imposant auftrumpfenden Stücken. Geistliche Melodien wurden für das Instrumentalensemble arrangiert.

2014 bis 2018 jährt sich das Konstanzer Konzil zum 600. Mal. Die Stadt feiert dieses Jubiläum als Ereignis mit europaweiter Ausstrahlung. Vorträge und Ausstellungen, wissenschaftliche Symposien und Festspiele, eine breite mediale Präsenz und eine internationale Pressearbeit, die Beteiligung der europäischen Partnerstädte und die Einladung hoher Regierungsvertreter sowie geistlicher Würdenträger rücken das Konziljubiläum ab 2014 für fünf Jahre in das Licht der internationalen Öffentlichkeit.

2014-2018: il Concilio di Costanza compie seicento anni. La città tedesca si appresta a celebrare questo anniversario come un avvenimento di risonanza europea. Conferenze e mostre, convegni scientifici e festival, un’ampia esposizione mediatica e un’attività stampa internazionale, il coinvolgimento di altre città europee e l’invito di alti funzionari governativi e dignitari ecclesiastici – tutto questo porterà all’anniversario del Concilio, dal 2014 ai prossimi cinque anni, una visibilità internazionale.

Negli anni 1414-1418 ebbe luogo a Costanza il più grande Congresso del Medioevo: il sedicesimo Concilio per l’elezione di un papa. Si trattò in effetti dell’unica elezione papale avvenuta in Germania. Fu scelta Costanza perché era sede episcopale, aveva alloggi sufficienti nonché edifici e saloni adatti alle riunioni. Nella città, che all’epoca contava 6.000 abitanti, presero dimora durante il Concilio 72.000 ospiti. Le sessioni erano inframmezzate da servizi liturgici e celebrazioni varie che naturalmente erano arricchite dalla musica. Secondo fonti contemporanee, nella città soggiornarono non meno di 365 strumentisti. Riuniti in ensemble che comprendevano cennamelle, trombe e tromboni, arricchivano tutte le occasioni con musica celebrativa. Gli ensemble di fiati potevano essere integrati da percussioni o strumenti ad arco, come testimonia un testo poetico di Oswald von Wolkenstein. Il poeta, cavaliere e diplomatico sud tirolese si trovava a Costanza durante il Concilio, ed è quindi un indispensabile testimone.

L’ensemble Capella della Torre ha portato alla luce questi documenti e ha sviluppato l’idea di una retrospettiva musicale di questo impostante avvenimento storico. Considerato che le fonti non citavano mai i nomi dei compositori, Capella delle Torre ha selezionato per il programma del CD soprattutto brani anonimi.

Artist(s)

Capella de la Torre

Capella de la Torre is a group of musicians who have made a name for themselves as specialists in historical performance practice. The ensemble's aim is to give listeners an immediate experience of the rich and hitherto neglected repertoire of mediaeval and renaissance music by performing it to a professional standard.
The name "de la Torre" has a double meaning. In the first place, it pays homage to the Spanish composer Francisco de la Torre, who wrote his "Danza Alta" at the beginning of the 16th century. This is probably the most famous piece for what was then known as "capella alta", an ensemble of wind instruments such as shawms, dulcians, sackbuts and cornetti. Capella de la Torre has specialized in music written for the "capella alta". Secondly, the name may be taken in a literal sense: "de la Torre" means "from the tower" and groups of wind players (Spanish: ministriles) often played on towers or balconies at festivals and other official occasions. "Torres de los Ministriles" are still to be found in many Spanish towns today.
Capella de la Torre does not confine itself to Spanish music, however, but also plays music written throughout the rest of Europe for the "hauts instruments" or "loud instruments". In general, it tries to breathe life into the old traditions of "ministriles", "piffari" and "Stadtpfeiffer".
In the music world of today there are very few ensembles centred around historical double-reed instruments. This is particularly so in Germany.

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Katharina Bäuml

Katharina Bäuml, born in Munich, studied modern oboe with Klaus Becker, Hanover, Rainer Herweg, Hamburg, and Winfried Liebermann, Mannheim. As part of her specialist studies of early music and historically informed performance, she subsequently took up the Baroque oboe, working with Renate Hildebrand (Hamburg) and Katharina Arfken (Basel). In master classes with Ku Ebbinge, Alfredo Bernardini, Paul Dombrecht, Bruce Haynes et al., she specialised in music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Katharina Bäuml teaches in Berlin and gives master classes at the universities in Geneva, Hanover and Lübeck. She is the leading European interpreter of her generation on her special instrument, the shawm Katharina Bäuml founded her ensemble “Capella de la Torre” in 2005, which guests at renowned festivals such...

Katharina Bäuml, born in Munich, studied modern oboe with Klaus Becker, Hanover, Rainer Herweg, Hamburg, and Winfried Liebermann, Mannheim. As part of her specialist studies of early music and historically informed performance, she subsequently took up the Baroque oboe, working with Renate Hildebrand (Hamburg) and Katharina Arfken (Basel). In master classes with Ku Ebbinge, Alfredo Bernardini, Paul Dombrecht, Bruce Haynes et al., she specialised in music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Katharina Bäuml teaches in Berlin and gives master classes at the universities in Geneva, Hanover and Lübeck. She is the leading European interpreter of her generation on her special instrument, the shawm Katharina Bäuml founded her ensemble “Capella de la Torre” in 2005, which guests at renowned festivals such as the “Tagen Alter Musik Regensburg”, the “Innsbrucker Festwochen”, “Laus Polyphoniae”, “Oude Muziek”, “Musique et Memoire”, “La Folia” and “Festival de Musica Antigua de Malaga”.
Katharina Bäuml has also had a special interest since 2010 in contemporary music. A CD released in autumn 2011 on the Genuin label presents seven new compositions for her duo “Mixtura” (founded together with the accordionist Margit Kern). Brice Pauset is at present composing a major work for Capella de la Torre and the ensemble recherche.

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Composer(s)

Oswald von Wolkenstein

Oswald von Wolkenstein was a German composer whose music bridged the Medieval and Renaissance eras; the last of the poet-musician knights whose monophonic music explored the ideal of courtly love, he also wrote polyphonic music in more contemporary forms. As noble "von" indicates, Oswald was from a knightly family of the Villanders line. The surname "von Wolkenstein" comes from the name of their property of Wolkenstein in Groednertal, South Tyrol (a mountainous Austrian province that was taken by Italy in World War II). As he was of high birth, there is some information available about his life; key events were written in family archives. Still, as is the norm with composers of the day, there are numerous gaps that can be filled in only imperfectly by extrapolation from his works. Oswald was a second son, which put him at a disadvantage, but also gave him freedom to pursue an adventurous life, and to enter the political sphere. He spent his youth as a page in service, which took him to various countries and gave him fluency in several languages. He became a diplomat for the league of Tyrolean nobles and for Emperor Sigismund and took part in several German councils.

His seat was Hauenstein castle near Bolzano, but in 1407 he inherited only part of Hauenstein itself, and spent the rest of his life in a property dispute with the other tenant, the family of Martin Jaeger. As a result of this dispute, and also because of political intrigues, he was imprisoned several times. Nevertheless, he fell in love with Anna Hausmann, the daughter of one of his adversaries in this dispute. He wrote several love poems to her, continuing even after his marriage to Margarete von Schwangau in 1417. He also wrote poems addressed to a "Barbara," but fortunately did not neglect to write love poetry addressed to his wife.

Oswald himself preserved a quantity of his own in two manuscripts designated "A" and "B." There is also a manuscript "C" that contains text but no music, and a few other sources. His songs are typically in AABB form, with arched, flowing melodic lines. There are some exceptions, such as Es komen neue mer gerant, which is a description of a military raid in northern Italy and is written in an almost parlando style, scoffing at the losers.

Oswald's poetry often drew on events he himself experienced or witnessed. The unusual fit between text and musical line in his music inspired a description of him as the "creator of the individual lied," which is ahistorical. Nor was he, as has sometimes been said, a Meistersinger, the German counterpart to the French troubador or trouvère. His music includes not only monophonic songs but also polyphony in three or four parts. Towards the end of his life he composed religious music in simple textures.

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Guillaume Dufay

Ever since his death, Dufay has been considered as one of the greatest composers of the 15th century. In his life as a composer and singer Dufay, like many others, traveled throughout Europe, yet he stayed most of his years in Cambrai, France. At an early age, Dufay already showed remarkable talent and on his fourteenth he received the necessary support, and expensive presents, from the local cathedral. He would never pursue an academic education, but he knew how to obtain good positions within the Church. Dufay composed in all the important genres of his age, from grandiose motets and intimate chansons to sacred, liturgical music. Dufay's style is surprisingly consistent and there is little development within his body of works....

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Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro

Philippe de Vitry

Domenico da Piacenza

Gilles Binchois

Ockeghem and Dufay may have been the best known composers of their time, it seems they both admired Binchois (which was a pseudonym, his real name was 'Gilles de Bins') to a great extent. Both composers wrote impressive lamentation for Binchois - Ockeghem his Mort tu as navré and Dufay his En triumphant de cruel dueil. The notion that Binchois is not as famous today is probably due to both his modesty and the fact that a large part of his works didn't survive after all these years. At the end of the 1420s, Binchois started working for the Burgundian chape, which was a musical bastion with a large focus on tradition. He wrote music as they would have liked it: sober, stylised chansons and sacred music. His...

Ockeghem and Dufay may have been the best known composers of their time, it seems they both admired Binchois (which was a pseudonym, his real name was 'Gilles de Bins') to a great extent. Both composers wrote impressive lamentation for Binchois - Ockeghem his Mort tu as navré and Dufay his En triumphant de cruel dueil. The notion that Binchois is not as famous today is probably due to both his modesty and the fact that a large part of his works didn't survive after all these years. At the end of the 1420s, Binchois started working for the Burgundian chape, which was a musical bastion with a large focus on tradition. He wrote music as they would have liked it: sober, stylised chansons and sacred music. His chansons must have been admired by his colleagues, since many of his melodies were used in other compositions.

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John Bedingham

Antonio Cornazano

Press

"A rich conjuring of pomp and ceremony from a defining time...of the power and potency of medieval music...But if you're already a covert, this one is for you."
EOS Classical Music, 01-6-2015

The music is presented harmonious and sensitive. And eventhough it is a reconstruction - its about music making not about lecturing. This has drive and a special touch.
Toccata, 01-9-2014

Brilliant performances that offer a fascinating insight into the music of the time (1414-1418)
Northern Echo, 17-7-2014

It is very well played with tight ensemble, the shawm sounds characteristic of wide low pressure reeds.
Early Music Review, 01-6-2014

A wonderful album!
Opus Klassiek, 19-5-2014

The result is a highly imaginative disc which wears its learning lightly and can be listened simply as a programme of attractive renaissance music, or in the context of the historical background. Highly recommended.
Planet Hugill, 17-5-2014

The German Renaissance band Capella de la Torre, playing shawm, slide trumpet, sackbut, cowhorn, lute and percussion, offers a varied program with music performed at the time when the Council gathered in Konstanz in order to elect a Pope. Their performances must be praised for their dazzling clarity as well as a really beautiful and well balanced ensemble playing.
Pizzicato, 28-4-2014

Alive history
Plato mania, 01-4-2014

No quote
platomania , 03-3-2014