La Tavola Cromatica - The Earle his Viols - Evelyn Tubb

La Tavola Cromatica
Un’accademia musicale dal Cardinale Francesco Barberini
Roma intorno al 1635

The Earle his Viols
Irene Klein - treble viol, bass viol
Jessica Marshall - tenor viol, bass viol
Brigitte Gasser - bass viol, treble viol
Randall Cook - violone
Uri Smilanski - bass viol

Evelyn Tubb - soprano
Marie Nishiyama - harp


Chromatic and enharmonic music for viol of the surrounding of Cardinal Francesco Barberini (Rom, around 1635), pieces by Domenico Mazzochi, Pomponio Nenna, Girolamo Kapsberger , Carlo Gesualdo a.o.

1638, one of Domenico Mazzochi’s few printed books of music was published, entitled “Madrigali a cinque voci”. In a dictation to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, Mazzochi identifies the true calling of his music: „Already they [the madrigals] have been honoured many times in Your allowing them to be sung together with your viol ensemble.“ The Cardinal had in fact subsidized a musical academy, in which a viol ensemble was active and significant enough that the institution was known as „accademia delle viole“. The use of viols allowed the polyphonic structure of the music to be clearly audible, whilst avoiding the confusion of simultaneously sung texts by having only the upper voice sung.

The theoretical backround for the Cardinal’s „accademia delle viole“ was provided by the scholar Giovanni B. Doni. Among the essential elements of powerfully effective music, according to Doni, belonged the use of different keys with their varying interval structures as well as chromatic and enharmonic.
The musicians of the ensemble „The Earle his Viols“ met at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The ensemble places great importance on a homogenous sound and plays on viols designed and made by the Basel instrument-maker Richard Earle, modelled on instruments represented in a painting by Tintoretto.
On the CD, pure instrumentals are changing with madrigals where the wonderful voice of the soprano Evelyn Tubb shins over the polyphonic sound of the viols.