Giovanni Zamboni's Grave from his 11th sonata for archlute
Mystery music and testing out the new Substack videos
I want to try the new embed video feature, so here is Giovanni Zamboni's Grave from his 11th sonata for archlute published in 1718. This music is so bizarre, weird and wondrous! I want to share it with you.
We know little about Zamboni, except that he was probably Roman and that he composed music for voice (madrigals) and this intriguing collection of sonatas for the archlute. I bought an archlute on a whim (second-hand, from an Italian player) during the height of the pandemic. It is mostly a continuo instrument, so you play a bass line upon which you improvise. There is almost no music specifically written for it, just a bit by some Italian composers such as Kapsberger and Piccinini, who mainly wrote for the theorbo.
But then, very bizarrely, Zamboni prints this collection of serene, wondrous and moving sonatas for the archlute as late as 1718. You can see a page of it here below, including the beginning of the piece I am playing. There are 12 sonatas. The twelfth is composed of only one movement, a beautiful Chaconne. The others follow a more typical baroque suite of Prelude, Allemanda, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue (or Minuet).
In 1718, lute music is on its way out and there is very little written for the instrument. Bach did not actually write “for the lute.” Most of the music that is still written for the lute is for the baroque lute, such as the works by Silvius Leopold Weiss who died in 1750.
Thanks to this very late book of alluring tunes, we have what I estimate about 30%-40% or so of the total repertoire specifically written for the archlute. The music I think is very interesting. It is still rhetorical, using the devices of rhetoric from the Baroque era but it also has strong elements that prefigure the later galant music period, with its looking for simplicity and expressiveness.
I think it is wonderful music but it is also obscure; if I didn't play the archlute, I would never have known about it.
Sounds interesting, but sadly I can't get the video to play from the email (I don't have the app)
More amusingly, are you familiar with what the name "Zamboni" evokes in the US and Canada?
I think the reason the archlute is no longer used is that musicians would see all those strings, then get a glimpse of the score, and run off to join the carnival. Seriously, though, thank you for introducing us to this interesting music.