Orpheus’ Lute - Bor Zuljan
The newest album from Bor Zuljan, lutenist and on this record, vocalist, explores the art of “improvisation and wonder” in humanist Italy. Zuljan is a specialist in plucked instruments, here using a number of different lutes, and one strung with metal strings. The research and historical performance practice that went into this album is extraordinary, with the album becoming a compendium with the variety of approaches used, across twenty-seven tracks.
In the track La Cara Cossa, Zuljan is joined by Mónica Pustilnik on another forgotten instrument, the viola da mano, another plucked instrument. The interaction of two instruments with their different timbres and levels of sustain is an aural treat.
Another note about this album is the great, and generous booklet, that explores the unanswered issues around performance, not to mention photos of the thimbles and plectrums used by the artist when playing the metal-strung lute.
The lute was a portable instrument, one that is often associated with troubadours. In the fifteenth track, Zuljan performs a piece by Bartolomeo Tromboncino (a favorite composer of mine, for his surname), entitled Zephyro Spira, which he both plays and sings, in a way we might envision many lutenists in the past would have done, in the spirit, perhaps, of a 1970s John Denver on guitar. The solution here on capturing Zuljan’s voice was to let his voice and lute both occupy the space of the San Martino in Mensola church. I think the solution for capturing his instruments and the ambiance of the church is acceptable. I was less impressed with the sound of the voice captured this way, but it is, however, the most natural way. If we were present with the musician, we’d have heard things with this balance, for sure.
Things turn colorful in the nineteenth track, Fortuna desperata, in the way the strings are allowed to buzz. At first listen, it made me smile, but the change in timbre and dynamics over time lost its novelty. It reminded me for the value in such an album, exploring this literature alongside instruments and playing styles that capture the variety of ways this music was most likely performed.
The piece that starts with Che faralla puts the singer’s voice, in first person, clearly in the persona of the lute player. The humorous text talks about a man who will become a monk now that his lady won’t have him. The text translates to “what will she do, what will she say?” Other pieces on this record all relate to love and the weather, subjects for which almost anyone could relate.
Giovanni Maria da Crema’s Passamezzo alla Bolognese isn’t of course a pasta dish, but a light piece with wandering melody that inspires improvisation over a repeated sequence of chords. Alla Bolognese speaks to its style, and I’m guessing, perhaps, the harmonies used.
Zuljan continues to record music for the lute in collections that make for excellent recitals; his last solo recordings include an album dedicated to Gesualdo and before that, John Dowland. He can also be found on collaborative albums, the one released this January featuring the music of Corbetta alongside Simone Vallerotondo with I Bassifondi.
The harmonic language of the early Renaissance may not be for everyone; the emotional depth of these works seems limited a bit, as are their harmonies. But the devil is in the details, and on this album, we’re treated to what Zuljan and his partner Mónica Pustilnk can do at taking the basic shell of a piece and extrapolating their own musical solutions, in each case, with fleet fingers.
As someone who recently visited not Florentine Italy, but the south of France, passing pastoral areas, mountains, bodies of water, and amazing architecture, including reverberant churches, I liked to, as much as was possible, when not handling my phone to capture pictures, to close my eyes and use my other senses to experience those places I visited. The smells, the sound, the otherworldliness I experienced when my eyes did open.
For me, this album did that for me. It’s the type of disc to spin when you want to escape. The instrumental dialog in the Rciercar performed by both musicians may be one of the places to start, if you want to escape your current place in life, and slow down to a time when contemplation, thought, and new ideas came to bloom.
For that, Zuljan succeeds well.
