Zarlino! It is so good to see you on CD at last. The major theorist of the renaissance, Gioseffo Zarlino's treatise Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558) served as a road map for composers such as Palestrina and Lassus, and students in the field of musicology cannot well expect to collect their diplomas without at least some passing familiarity with this work. Zarlino's work as a composer, however, is quite significant and of extremely high quality -- and never recorded. One would have to go way back to an obscure LP made in the mid-'70s by Alexander Blachly for the Collegium label to find another recording of anything by Zarlino. The reasons for this are manifold; the accepted notion, redacted by Zarlino's Grove's biographer, that his works are only of "secondary interest," and the idea that good theorists generally do not make for good composers. There is some basis for such opinion in reality -- the concern for creating material appropriate for use in teaching is something that is by its very nature extra-musical, and we generally do not find, for example, the easiest pieces in elementary piano exercise books particularly good for listening purposes, as useful as they are for "teaching little fingers to play." Zarlino, however, was as expert a musician in practice as he was in teaching; Zarlino succeeded Cipriano de Rore as maestro di capella at San Marco Cathedral in Venice in 1555 and remained in this position until his death in 1590. Zarlino's work list is extensive, as well, the earliest prints of his music date from the late 1540s and continue until about 1570, consisting mostly of sacred, and a few secular, motets, but also including about a dozen madrigals. Eight of the madrigals were edited in 1963, but these have witnessed little use. Cristle Collins Judd, expert on Renaissance theory and author of the book Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes (2000) has created the editions used on this superb first full-length recording of Zarlino's music, Gioseffo Zarlino: Canticum Canticorum Salomonis, featuring the
Ensemble Plus Ultra under
Michael Noone.
The centerpiece of the disc is a set of eight motets set to verses from the Song of Solomon in the Latin translation of Renaissance-era Hebrew scholar Isidoro Chiari; these are very special, as each motet gradually moves stepwise through the eight modes as it progresses through Chiari's text. Unfortunately, Zarlino did not bring this ambitious plan to completion as it breaks off in the fifth chapter, but it is a highly impressive musical achievement as well as in theoretical terms. Grove's states that Zarlino's music was "conservative," apparently taking no account of the striking and highly original use of harmony that opens his setting of the "Veni sancte spiritus" at the beginning of this disc. The performance by
Ensemble Plus Ultra under
Noone is exemplary throughout; there is a rough edit at one point, but otherwise Glossa's recording, made at St. Peter-in-Chains in London, is well made and suited to Zarlino's musical textures.
Each piece on Glossa's Gioseffo Zarlino: Canticum Canticorum Salomonis, like expertly composed Renaissance sacred music should, lifts listeners up and gently lets them down. One should be grateful for such a disc; this is a triumph of latter-day musicologists scraping the barnacles from the hull of a worthy vessel and setting it to sail so that the rest of us can partake of its majesty -- it is highly recommended.