George Philip Telemann Duo in G from Der Getreue Music-Meister for descant and treble recorder arr. Manfred Harras.
Anthony Holborne Pavanes, Galliards, Almins (1599) arranged for one melody instrument and keyboard, ed. Manfred Harras.
These are two enterprising editions by Rondo Publishing, edited by Manfred Harras. Rondo Publishing was founded in 2005 by viol player Jacqui Robertson-Wade, initially to produce teaching material for the viol. It has since published volumes of different kinds of music, both period and modern, for teaching and performance, by various editors such as Tamsin Lewis and Alison Crum. Manfred Harras is a familiar performer and teacher in the recorder-playing community; he taught for many years on the Norvis Early Music course in Durham.
The first of these two books contains a duet by Telemann (1681-1767) arranged for descant and treble recorder, from Der Getreue Music-Meister (1728). This collection is considered to be the first musical periodical; it contains seventy small vocal and instrumental compositions. In Der Getreue Music-Meister, Telemann explains that this piece can be played on the transverse flute and viola pomposa (a 5-stringed instrumented slightly wider that the viola, played on the arm) or violin. Viola da Gamba players will be familiar with the version of this duet in A major. It has four movements, headed Dolce, Scherzando, Largo e misurato and Vivace e staccato. In this edition, the second part is written an octave higher to suit the treble recorder playing alongside a descant. The layout and printing is very clear and all the articulation marks and octave adjustments that differ from the original are clearly displayed.
A bonus of this edition is the playalong CD that makes it very useful learning material for the solo player. At the end of the book there is an explanation about how the CD is to be used. At the start of the CD, there is a complete performance of the duet: in the playalong tracks that follow, the part that is being learnt is recorded more quietly than the other part. There are two versions of each movement, one at modern and the other at baroque pitch, plus a set of slow playalong tracks for each of the fast movements. All the tracks begin with a bar of two clicks to enable the player to get used to the speed. Finally, there are two tuning tracks to enable the player to check his/her pitch, making a total of 42 tracks altogether. All of this information is supplied in a table format in a clear and concise manner.
The 1599 collection by Anthony Holborne (c.1545-1602) entitled Pavanes, Galliards, Almains and other Short AEirs both grave, and light is a favourite among viol and recorder players, and many will recognise such tunes as the almains entitled The Night Watch and The Honie-suckle and the galliard, The Fairie Round. Holborne informs us that the original pieces are ‘in five parts for viols, violins and other musicall winde instruments’, but it is not always easy to find five players to perform them. Harras’s edition contains a selection of ten pieces from this collection arranged for one; melody instrument (descant or tenor recorder, treble viol, violin or flute) and keyboard accompaniment.
The accompaniment is interesting in that there are two versions, one a reduction of the other four parts for harpsichord (Sally Fortino), and the other a slightly simpler and lighter version designed for the modern piano (arranged by Rosemary Robinson). I think either of these versions would be useful as a lute accompaniment. The choice of pieces is a fairly good representation of the different dances from Holborne’s original set. A minor criticism from myself, a viol player very much in favour of the sixteenth-century fondness for melancholia, is that eight of the ten pieces are in major keys, while only one of the two in a minor key is in sombre mood. Could this perhaps be rectified in another volume? To sum-up, these are two very carefully thought-out editions that are not only useful as teaching tools but also as performance material.