These two volumes of music have covers that are immediately attractive and intriguing. A superficial comment perhaps, but their design has clearly been given a great deal of thought and there is something to be gleaned from it. The full title of the first, all of which is written on the front cover, tells us a great deal about the contents of the book. It is: A Christmas Gift, Pavans, Galliards, and Almains upon Christmas Aeirs or Carols goth grave, and light in five parts, for Viols, Violins or other Musicall Winde Instruments, Made by Ian Payne, Batcheler of Musick: Also two Lent and Easter Almains, called the Exodus and Hortus Christi. The spellings create an atmosphere, and a background of holly gives a Christmassy character.
Lollipops for Gambas has a completely contrasting cover: two colourful cartoon prawns are sitting on deckchairs, playing viols and licking lollipops. Multiple puns intended! My next thought was ‘Why write these books?’ Ian Payne has gone to extraordinary lengths to compose the pieces in A Christmas Gift, 35 in all, using carols and airs from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; he also imitates the compositional process that would have been used to create consort music at that time. When there is such a wealth of music from the period in existence, why write more?
Payne’s extensive introduction tells us exactly why, and the most important reason is simply, for fun. Motifs from the carols used are bracketed in the score for the reader to find more easily, but many are well-hidden in the texture, so they would not all be obvious to the listener. Of course, making the tunes easily recognisable is not the main reason for using this form of composition, but it adds to the fun when one does pick out a familiar melody. In the collection, Payne often includes a Pavan, Galliard and Almain on the same theme, as would have been done in Jacobean times, so that one can perform them in sets.
One could accuse Ian Payne of introspection in writing this anthology, but in including a CD of parts for viols, brass, recorders, and transposed parts for brass and strings, he makes it a very useful resource for music teachers and has given considerable thought to how the music might be used in practice. Score-reading the pieces myself on the piano was rewarding and made me want to include some of them in my next Christmas concert at school.
Lollipops for Gambas also contributes to the already extensive repertoire of a long established chamber music combination, this time the bass viol duo. Here, though, the emphasis is on creating something that is instantly popular and attractive, hence Lollipops! Well-know pieces have been imaginatively transcribed and the results are delightful. Any piece in this volume would make an excellent encore, and all of them are suitable by students of intermediate to advanced level.
Most of the music is from the baroque era – Purcell, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti and Couperin – but a complete Baryton duet by Haydn extends the range, and a version of La Cumparsita (‘the carnival goers’), a tango written in 1916 by the Uruguayan musician Gerado Matos Rodriguez, adds a humorous finale. Bach’s Little Prelude in C minor BWV 999 is also amusing in that the players alternate notes in the same way that the keyboard player’s hands would in the original. The parts of these pieces lie well on the instrument, as keys have either been carefully chose or the piece transposed, and the result is completely idiomatic for the gamba. A few helpful fingerings are included.
The two viols are almost always equal partners, and this is a welcome addition to a canon of music that is often perceived, by those who don’t know it, as morose and heavy-going. An eminent baroque musician, who shall remain anonymous, once said to me that even he thought that the bass viol duos were ‘below the musical Plimsoll Line’. Anything that can help to dispel that myth is very welcome. So, one book is complex and intriguing, fulfilling a self-set intellectual challenge. The other provides popular and light-hearted material that might appeal to the non-specialist, which all goes to show you can judge a book by its cover.