a r t i s t : VA
t i t l e : Babcotte, Sudbury and Eaton: English School of Funerar
d a t e : 2007
l a b e l : GOFV (Guild of Funerary Violinists)
g e n r e : Classical
r l s. d a t e : Feb/2008
t r a c k s : 10
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 33,2 MB
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Another glorious glimpse back at the long lost art of the
Funerary Violin. A genre all but forgotten and lost, some say
quashed by the Catholic Church, a gorgeous mournful body of
work, solo violin pieces to be performed at funerals, sad and
sorrowful, minor key and miserable, dense with dark emotions,
perfectly transporting the listener back to an nineteenth
century funeral, the procession, the mourners clad in black...
Very beautiful and evocative. But it's not just the music,
it's the tangled history of the players and the personalities,
the musicians and the composers and the patrons responsible
for much of the music. Oh, and the fact that it's all made up.
That's right, these amazing scratchy wax cylinder recordings
of simple melancholy violin pieces, and the text accompanying
them have all been fabricated. Although sometimes it's tough
to tell when hearing the genuinely creepy, crackly and
realistically old timey sounding music, and reading the
extensive tales of the composers and their tragic lives. Maybe
it is all real? Who are we to say? Just because there is only
one person in the entire world who knows everything, anything
actually, about the mysterious Guild Of Funerary Violinists.
And the fact that none of the performers or composers are
mentioned anywhere, recorded, written, anecdotal, except
within the pages of the book, the liner notes and the website
of the genre's discoverer (perhaps creator).
But like we mentioned in a past review of another Funerary
disc, who cares? The music is dark and mysterious, emotional
and creepy, and the text is fascinating, impossibly well
researched considering none of it is real, and totally fun to
read.
This disc (supposedly) collects the work of three of the most
important figures in the English School Of Funerary Violin.
Babcotte, Sudbury and Eaton. All of these recording recovered
from the extensive collection of Funerary relics kept by
Gunter II, Prince of Schwatzburg-Sonderhausen, who in addition
to the wax cylinders heard here, also counted among his prized
possessions, the coffins of Goethe and Heine, as well as the
death mask of Beethoven. The first Babcotte track here is
thought to be performed by Gunter, himself an accomplished
violinist, however the rest, the legendary "Funerary Suite #
4", due to their sound and performance are considered to be
the work of Wilhelm Kleinbach (whose disc we reviewed a list
or two back). The Eaton piece, a slow mournful, sometimes
atonal dirge, is performed by the composer himself, captured
on wax cylinder in 1913. And the final piece, "The Erroneous
Dirge Of George Babcotte is performed and recorded by Maria
Rotaru in 1975, a young Romanian violinist who tried to pass
the work off as her own composition. When the truth came out,
Rotaru disappeared mysteriously, and it was only after the
collapse of the Soviet Union that this piece resurfaced. Or so
we're told...
Even without the fantastical backstory, the music is worth the
price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and
beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully,
minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and
sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others,
all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle
and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy
vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this
music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world
of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that
much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it
is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals
the deal.
Recommended!
http://www.aquariusrecords.org
http://www.guildoffuneraryviolinists.org.uk/
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01-Prince Gunter II - The Erroneous Dirge Of George [07:14]
Babcotte 1587-1697
02-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [03:01]
Sudbury 1832: March
03-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [03:19]
Sudbury 1832: Introduction and March
04-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [01:51]
Sudbury 1832: Dream
05-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [02:29]
Sudbury 1832: Panic
06-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [01:51]
Sudbury 1832: Flight
07-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [02:05]
Sudbury 1832: Eulogy
08-Wilhelm Kleinbach - Funerary Suite No.4 - Charles [01:49]
Sudbury 1832: March
09-Stanley Eaton - Introduction To The Angels - Stanley [05:33]
Eaton 1910
10-Maria Rotaru - The Erroneous Dirge Of George Babcotte [08:35]
1587-1697
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37:47 min