This collection of early German, Italian, and French motets and songs arranged for clavicytherium, a predecessor of the harpsichord, is likely to be of primary interest to diehard fans of early music. These pieces are taken from a single mid-sixteenth century manuscript, the Tablature of Johannes von Lublin, a Polish organist and theorist. (Tablature refers to a type of notation, a sort of musical shorthand, that supplies the performer with just enough essential information with which to realize a composition.) One of the ...
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This collection of early German, Italian, and French motets and songs arranged for clavicytherium, a predecessor of the harpsichord, is likely to be of primary interest to diehard fans of early music. These pieces are taken from a single mid-sixteenth century manuscript, the Tablature of Johannes von Lublin, a Polish organist and theorist. (Tablature refers to a type of notation, a sort of musical shorthand, that supplies the performer with just enough essential information with which to realize a composition.) One of the album's strongest points of interest is the instrument used, a precise replica of the oldest surviving strung keyboard instrument, a German clavicytherium built around 1480. Its sound, rather than being totally archaic, is surprisingly similar to that of a Baroque harpsichord. The transcriptions of vocal pieces have sameness, in spite of the range of genres and nationalities, that gives the album a somewhat flat quality. Part of the problem is inherent in the clavicytherium, which has...
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