Jacob van Eyck: A Wonder for All the Ages in His Flute and Bell-Playing

This is a disc that accomplishes something interesting -- it's just that it's something different from what's implied by the packaging. The names of a recorder player and a carillonneur suggest duets by their presence, and the listener is naturally inspired to wonder how such a thing might be done. The confusing Dutch-English subtitle, "A wonder for all the ages in his flute and bell-playing," clarifies nothing. In fact flute-carillon duets occur only in pieces that use echo effects, the Fantasia en echo of Sweelinck (track 13) and the Batali (track 21); the rest of the music is played by one instrument or the other. The duets are accomplished through electronic intervention (they had to carry a good deal of electronic equipment up to the top of a bell tower), and they're in the nature of a diversion. What the bulk of the album is trying to accomplish is not trickery but a look at two widely divergent instrumental sounds that are nevertheless linked by a common feature: a reliance on familiar tunes. Composers of the seventeenth century might create original music for either carillon or recorder, but for the most part performers on each instrument wanted to play music that they and their listeners, whether in a chamber or all over town, already knew. The booklet points out that the recorder and the carillon have a similar range, and essentially each is capable only of playing a single line. Each instrument, however, creates interesting registral effects that imply harmony where none is actually present. The capper is that the Dutch composer or compiler of the music on this disc, Jacob van Eyck (1590-1657), was known both as "the greatest campanological expert of his time" (to quote the booklet) and as the creator of Der Fluyten Lust-hof, a collection of recorder tunes arranged from various sources or newly composed. Put together for amateur recorder players, the book is still well known among them today. Dutch recorder player Saskia Coolen, who has taken a sort of abstract view of her instrument's role in the Renaissance and Baroque musical worlds, and carillonneur Arie Abbenes alternate tracks, often trying out the same tune in versions for their respective instruments. The repertoire is international, with Dowland's Pavana Lachrymae showing up alongside original carillon pieces and even Caccini's solo madrigal Amarilli, mia bella, which wouldn't seem suitable to either instrument. The whole concept seems a little gimmicky, but it does tell the listener something about each instrument and about the role of tunes in a repertoire of music where one's attention is usually focused on other factors. Recommended for carillon lovers and for those intrigued by the speculative turn certain historically oriented performers have taken in recent years.