A modest but admirable audience came to listen to Hopkinson Smith, the high priest of the lute, at Bourgie Hall on Thursday. You could have heard a pin drop and that’s good, because a lute recital requires the listener to concentrate beyond measure with other musical disciplines.
To listen to the lute or theorbo on record is to invite an instrumentalist into a domestic environment that we identify and control. It’s a very pleasant thing, especially since we adapt the level of listening to what suits us. Moreover, a number of records (Hopkinson Smith with Naïve, Jakob Lindberg with BIs, Paul Beier with Stradivarius) are very well recorded.
Going to a concert is something else entirely. There’s this guy in the distance on a chair with his “little plump guitar”, emitting a subtle scratching of sounds ranging from the weak, the very weak and the infinitesimal. The first effort is to understand where we are and what is happening. The adaptation time is different depending on the individual.
The beginnings of publishing
The repertoire, then, makes things more or less difficult. This recital plunged us into the first decade of the 16th century. Hopkinson Smith recalled in the notice that Ottaviano Petrucci, inaugurating the musical printing press in 1501, was the first publisher of polyphonic music.
The lutenist has chosen to highlight the works of Joan Ambroso Dalza and Francesco Spinacino published in 1507 and 1508. The differences are notable: Danza is a “pleasure” lutenist whose popular creativity is based on dances and refrains ( we give up calculating the number of repetitions of the same melodic formula in Caldibi Castelgliano), while Spinacino is an intellectual who seems to manipulate the instrument to explore its expressive possibilities. In the notice, Smith, noting a lack of reliability of the original edition, assumes a boldness in the reconstruction of the works of Spinacino. “The only choice is either to leave them as they are and not play them, or to weave the threads into a plausible and convincing framework, as any work of art should be” , he wrote.
Indeed, we too often forget that the art of the Baroque performer is coupled with an art of “re-composer” whether for a restoration of scores (Jordi Savall and Sainte-Colombe) or for the orchestration of operas by Monteverdi for example. Hopkinson Smith adds to this a reflection on a singular way of tuning his six-course lute (five double strings and one single string). A bit like András Schiff in Bach, Hopkinson Smith is not only a sensitive interpreter but also a scholar who intellectually dominates the subject he magnifies.
To the extent that
That said, this musical asceticism, the fruit of historical research and a musicological science, seems to be something that is gradually gained. Is it because they are more interesting that we enjoyed the unpredictable so much Recercare IV and IX of Spinacino and the Piva ala ferrarese of Dalza in the second part? Or is it because the interpreter was freer and more at ease, allowing himself refinements managed with more precision? Or is it because, by force, we have entered more into this universe? No objective answer is necessary.
One thing is certain: the high-flying musical musicologist that is Hopkinson Smith, who comes to dispense with art the fruits of his musical and instrumental knowledge, it is not the same approach as going to listen to the 5th of Beethoven and we’re not going to pretend it’s easy. We also have the right to ask the question differently. Who is such a sharp exercise for? To the lutenist and musicologist emulators of Hopkinson Smith? In this obsessive thematic extremism, are we going towards people who go about their daily business to popularize his instrument and his repertoire?
Perhaps the Salle Claude-Champagne at the Université de Montréal would have been the appropriate setting for this learned and ascetic concert.