False Alphabet – When Letters Hide Something.
The Ensemble I Bassifondi, founded and hand-picked by Simone Vallerotonda, aims at rediscovering and offering the audience, in chamber format, the 17th-18th century repertoire for a consort of lutes and sundry instruments.
They will be featured during the Canberra International Music Festival and then come to Melbourne to present their last album Alfabeto falso, nominated in the International Classical Music Award 2018 among the best baroque instrumental records.
Read more: click here
I Bassifondi
Simone Vallerotonda: theorbo, guitar and conducting
Gabriele Miracle: percussions
Federico Toffano: colascione and strumming guitar
Photo by Matteo Casilli
The treatise Nuova inventione d’intavolatura, per sonare li balletti sopra la chitarra spagniuola (“A newly invented tablature for playing balletti on the Spanish guitar”), published in 1606 by Girolamo Montesardo, radically revolutionized the way to write and perform guitar music. For the first time, an extremely practical guitar notation was proposed: the alphabet. It consisted in the correspondence between any chord, whether major or minor, and a letter. This simplified way of writing finally enabled any amateur or professional musician who owned a guitar to play a dance or accompany a voice, by performing the “letters” written on a single stave with superimposed rhythmic information. The proliferation of works printed in alphabetical notation, including favourite tunes, ground basses, dances, was soon enormous. This “language” – conveying a precious and varied technique of rasgueado (aka “picco e repicco”, or quick strumming) capable of realizing any kind of rhythm – was a distinguishing feature for guitarists. Next to the ordinary alphabet, they used to employ a complementary alter ego of sorts: the false alphabet. It included the same chords as the former, but “dirtied” with extraneous and crushed notes (acciaccaturas). The idea of using chords as harmonic colour was therefore, for the first time, put into practice by Italian guitarists of the early 17th century, who made it their peculiar and unique element.
This concert, mirroring a typical instrumental session in 17th-century Italy, features some among the most representative works of that period in the same spirit of sharing and improvisation – a peculiar trait of the ancient way of making music together.
To download the programme click here
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