Francesco da Milano

[Carey]

The way many CGists feel about Bach's Ciaccona from the D minor Partita,
I feel about a few of this composer's Fantasias and Ricercars; Ness 5 being
my personal Everest. Glenn Gould's line "better written than it can ever be played" fits this piece perfectly, I think. David Tanenbaum's 1986-7 CD
'Lute Masterworks' was my introduction to Milano, and I'm so glad he
recorded these pieces, on a great, strong-sounding spruce Gilbert, to boot..
A *really* good, intense recording, IMO.

Anyone else here into Francesco da Milano, by chance?

[Cedar51]

I really like Francesco da Milano too. There is something very pleasant about this music. The constant flow of interwoven melodies and contrasting ideas makes it hard to stop listening. There's no filler, it's all pretty well thought out. Definitely an underrated composer. Keep working on N.5, you'll get it eventually I'm sure!

[Carey]

Thanks for the reply. The way you described Milano's music is pretty much
what I hear, too. I like the short motives he uses and then develops in
different ways, a lot.

Found this quote at Wikipedia:

"..One of the defining characteristic features of Francesco's style is the manipulation and development of short melodic motifs within a "narrative" formal outline.[3] Francesco was drawing on techniques found in contemporary vocal music, e.g. works by Josquin des Prez and composers of his generation. Aside from his influence on the development of lute music, he is also important for being among the first composers to create monothematic ricercars. Francesco's reputation today rests on his ricercars and fantasias, but contemporaries apparently held his intabulations of vocal works by other composers to be the best part of his œuvre."

When I first heard his music- on Tanenbaum's CD, before I heard Bream play
it on the lute- I thought it was somewhat interesting, but that was all.
Then I found those little melodic fragments coming into my head, and
was drawn back again and again.. and I love the polyphony.
I'll never play N. 5 truly well, but there's plenty of meat there to work on,
as well as in some of the "easier" ones.

I will check out your book; it looks like a labor of love.

CW

[Trevor B.]

Co-incidentally, I recently discovered the youtube video below featuring a fine performance of Milano's Ricercar #34 by Elisa La Marca. Milano represents the high point of Renaissance imitative polyphony on lute IMHO. I like the piece below so much I've decided to transcribe it along with Ness#40 and #3 so I'll have a little guitar set of this wonderful composer's music in my repertoire.



Here's a link to a great resource for the compositions of Francesco Canova da Milano:

http://luteshop.co.uk/articles/francesco-da-milano/

[Carey]

What beautiful playing in that video! Thanks for those links.
This music really grows on you, IMNSHO..

From Trevor B's luteshop link:

"..Pairs of voices often sing duets (see 2, 3, 28) a technique popular with admired composers of the previous generation such as Josquin Desprez. Francesco excels in making vocal counterpoint clear on the lute: he achieves this largely by avoiding dense textures while often implying more parts than are actually present.."

Yes, this.