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We don’t know much about the life of the Neapoli­tan com­poser Rinal­do di Capua, who was born some­where around 1710 and died, in pover­ty and obscu­rity, in 1780. But, briefly, he achieved some fame as a com­poser of opera, and made one of the key inno­va­tions in the trans­for­ma­tion of the sym­phony from a mere suite of vignettes, which could be shuf­fled or sub­sti­tuted like a deck of cards, to its lat­er form as a coher­ent whole, the “sym­pho­ny-sonata” form that makes, say, a Beethoven sym­phony appear as nar­ra­tive as a play, and saw it’s ulti­mate degree of log­i­cal devel­op­ment in Sibelius’ Sev­enth. Accord­ing to the diary of Charles Bur­ney, a musi­cian trav­el­ing in Italy in 1770, di Capua had the same ten­dency to solid­ify the opera buf­fainto some­thing more resem­bling our idea of a dra­matic opera. Bur­ney relates that, after a peri­od of celebri­ty for many operas (all but one of which are lost), he found him “liv­ing, or rather starv­ing in 1770 at Rome, the chief scene of his for­mer glo­ry! This com­poser, whose pro­duc­tions were, dur­ing many years, the delight of all Europe, was reduced at Rome to the utmost indi­gence. Dio­genes the Cyn­ic was nev­er more mean­ly clad through choice, than Rinal­do through neces­sity: a patched coat, and stock­ings that want­ed to be patched or darned.” Bur­ney reports that the old man was par­tic­u­larly bit­ter because he had hoped to pro­vide for his old age by pub­lish­ing his col­lected works, only to dis­cover that his son had burned all his man­u­s­cipts! Hence, we know lit­tle about a fair­ly impor­tant com­poser of the Roco­co peri­od. Toron­to Pub­lic Library’s huge col­lec­tion con­tains noth­ing by him, though the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto’s Thomas Fish­er Rare Book Library [one of the lit­tle-known trea­sures of the city, by the way], has a libret­to of one of his operas, and else­where the Uni­ver­sity has some scraps of sheet music. But one, ran­dom exam­ple of his operas sur­vives, appar­ently a minor ear­ly work. It is La Zin­gara, an Inter­mezo in Two Parts. This was lat­er reworked into some­thing more uni­fied opera, but what sur­vives is in the orig­i­nal opera buf­faform. It was per­formed by the Mainz Cham­ber Orches­tra, with Annelies Moke­witz (sopra­no), Rodol­fo Malacarne (tenor) and Laerte Malaguti (bass). The per­for­mance exists on a Turn­about record­ing which I obtained in a yard sale in my neigh­bor­hood, where yard sales can turn up any­thing. If this one, minor work is any hint, di Capua was a tal­ented man. The melodies are fine, the ritor­nel­los are dra­mat­i­cally effec­tive. I don’t urge any­one to run out and lis­ten, because their chances of find­ing the piece are remote.

After lis­ten­ing to Nana Mouskouri’s Nou­velles chan­sons de la Vieille France(1978), I dug up the album that pre­ceded it, Vieilles chan­sons de France(1973). Both albums, cov­er­ing a wide vari­ety of tra­di­tional French melodies, some dat­ing from the mid­dle ages, act­ed as a use­ful reminder that Cana­dian folk music owes some­thing to France. The Cana­dian folk tra­di­tion is so sat­u­rated with Celtic ele­ments — one musi­col­o­gist clas­si­fied the whole coun­try as a “Celtic out-island” — that one for­gets that many of the old­est songs docome from France.Lis­ten­ing to these two albums, I found it easy to guess what part of France a song came from. If the song sound­ed vague­ly famil­iar and had a “Cana­dian feel­ing” to it, it turned out to have come from Bri­tanny, Nor­mandy, or the Low­er Loire. These are, of course, the places where the bulk of the first set­tlers in Cana­da orig­i­nated, the mar­itime vil­lages of the west coast of France. Many of these set­tlers did not even speak French, but were Bre­tons, whose Celtic lan­guage is clos­est to Welsh, so the ear­li­est Cana­di­an music already start­ed out on a qua­si-Celtic foot­ing. Sub­se­quently, wave after wave of Scot­tish and Irish music deeply Celti­cized the folk music of all of Cana­da, whether it was sung in French, Eng­lish, Gael­ic, or abo­rig­i­nal lan­guages. But in many cas­es, the orig­i­nal melody does come from France, and occa­sion­ally has sur­vived in both coun­tries. It’s inter­est­ing to hear them sung by a Euro­pean singer, though I sup­pose my own her­itage will ensure that the Celti­cized Cana­dian ver­sions will always feel “the right way” to me.

Mousk­ouri has been called “the the best sell­ing female singer of all time” (though I sus­pect Lata Mangeshkar has a bet­ter claim to that title). A Greek, born at Cha­nia, on Crete, she is still going strong, per­form­ing many con­certs year­ly at the age of 74. She sings in many lan­guages, but she is best known for her work in French, and also Amer­i­can Jazz. Both these albums are delightful.

I’ve writ­ten before about Ali Far­ka Touré, the sub­lime gui­tarist and song writer Tim­buk­tu [in blog entry Think­ing of Tim­buk­tu]. In the Heart of the Moonwas the sec­ond last album he released before his death in March of 2006. Here, he is teamed up with mas­ter koraplay­er Toumani Dia­baté, in a spon­ta­neous jam ses­sion, with­out rehearsal. A few over­dubs (some by Ry Cood­er) were lat­er added, but these are dis­creet, and not intru­sive to the effort­less flow of the ses­sion. All twelve tracks are superb. It is also more tra­di­tion­al, hark­ing back to the pre-elec­tric days of the gri­otper­form­ers of clas­si­cal Malian music, and mix­ing both Song­hai and Bam­bara strains. The cumu­la­tive mood is hyp­not­i­cal­ly plea­sur­able. There is no hint of rival­ry in the duets. The kora is built from a cal­abash gourd cut in half and cov­ered with cow skin, with a notched bridge, putting it rough­ly in the man­dolin fam­i­ly. But it’s played some­what like a fla­men­co gui­tar, and the strings give a dis­tinct­ly harp-like sound. Dia­baté is per­haps the finest inter­preter of this instru­ment. Touré, as the more famous musi­cian, doesn’t hog the show. He lets the Diabaté’s kora shine in the lime­light for most of the songs. The sub­tle­ty of their col­lab­o­ra­tion hits the lis­ten­er only as one gets well into the album. If you are going to buy three albums to intro­duce your­self to the glo­ries of the Malian Renais­sance (for that is what is going on in that coun­try), then I rec­om­mend this album, Touré’s The Source, and Amadou et Mariam’s Dimanche à Bamako.

17809. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Con­stan­tino­ple
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I’ve just acquired Zim­babwe: Tra­di­tions of the Shona Peo­ple ― The Soul of Mbi­ra. Most eth­no­log­i­cal record­ings are of lim­ited inter­est to non-spe­cial­ists, but the sound of the African instru­ment known as the mbi­raor kalim­bais so delight­ful that a broad audi­ence can enjoy this album. The album con­sists of record­ings made in Zim­babwe by eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist Paul F. Berlin­er. Berlin­er is the acknowl­edged author­ity on mbi­ramusic, and author of The Soul of Mbi­ra, pub­lished in 1993 by Uni­ver­sity of Chica­go Press. The mbi­ra con­sists of a wood­en sound­ing board, on which tuned iron keys are mount­ed. The keys are played by the thumbs. The music of the mbi­ra, as it is played by the Shona peo­ple of Zim­babwe, is com­plex and polyrhyth­mic, often giv­ing the impres­sion of sev­eral instru­ments played at once. The form of mbi­ra pieces, usu­ally accom­pa­nied by a drum called the hosho, vague­ly resem­bles the works of Philip Glass, in that com­plex repeat­ing pat­terns slow­ly mutate over a long time. The mbi­ra is doc­u­mented in African cul­ture as ear­ly as 1589, and is prob­a­bly much old­er. It may be close­ly asso­ci­ated with the tech­nol­ogy of iron smelt­ing, which in turn is asso­ci­ated with the expan­sion of the Ban­tu-speak­ing peo­ples of Africa. There was very good qual­ity iron smelt­ing in the Muta­pa Empire of the 13th to 17th centuries.

While the mbi­ra has not spread out of Africa in the same way that the ban­jul(ban­jo) did, it has some affi­ciana­dos in the rest of the world. Earth, Wind and Fire, the eclec­tic Chica­go-based band of the 1970s, fea­tured the kalim­ba. This is a vari­ant of the mbi­ra, tuned dia­ton­i­cally in the key of G, with the keys placed in a non-tra­di­tion­al man­ner (adja­cent notes on the scale sit­ting on oppo­site sides). It was invent­ed in the 1950’s and was an “export” ver­sion of the instru­ment, orig­i­nally mar­keted by a New Jer­sey firm as a toy! Earth, Wind and Fire’s band­leader, Mau­rice White, became quite pro­fi­cient on the instru­ment, and his per­for­mances helped res­cue the instru­ment from its “toy” status.