Luca Marenzio Le rose frond e fiori Katalin Tarnai - Soprano & Sandor Szaszvarosi - Viola da Gamba

Luca Marenzio: Le rose, fronde e fiori
Katalin Tarnai-soprano
Sándor Szászvárosi-Viola da Gamba (after Jacobinus Steiner by Pavel Celly - Brno, Czech Republic)
Augustus, 2022, Nagybörzsöny, Hungary

Camera: Custos Music
Voice engineer: Custos Music, Mátyás Ölveti

Special thanks to the Catholic church of Ste Stephan, Nagybörzsöny and to Mátyás Ölveti.

The Cantar alla Viola style was heard and watched in the video developed in Italy. Instead of the usual lute, the vocal line was accompanied by the viola da gamba. The Italian composer Silvestro Ganassi created special rules to make it easier for players to accompany the vocal part on the viola da gamba in a flexible way, different from the lute.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the popularity of polyphonic music increased because chordal instruments could play several parts at the same time alongside the melody. Thanks to lute or Cantar alla viola intabulation techniques, a single musician who could sing and play the lute or viola da gamba could perform three- or four-part madrigals.

This was also practical because skilled musicians could bring music, which was previously only heard in churches or gatherings, into their homes for personal enjoyment.

Plucked and bowed instruments cannot perfectly reproduce all the details of polyphony and often favor chordal playing. This technique may have been an important step toward the development of basso continuo playing.