For approximately a century and a half and for a series of reasons too long to list here, music lovers have gradually become more aware of their musical past. Beginning with the «second première» of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion by Felix Mendelssohn in 1829, the interest in early music has increased steadily. Because of this, musicology, the discipline that attempts to make a thorough study of music from a historical and analytic point of view, was born.
Another important step in the study of early music was taken by Wanda Landowska and Arnold Dolmetsch. Thanks to these pioneers, interest in early music was not limited merely to the music itself but also to its contemporary performance practice. Thus, at the beginning of our century an entire artistic movement was born that would be fertile in practical results, given the collaboration of performers, musicologists, art historians, instrument makers and critics.
Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting activities within this resurrection of performance practices of former times was the study of early instruments, both from the point of view of their actual reproduction as well as their digital mechanics. Naturally the first instruments brought to light again were those that enjoyed the most popularity during their golden age: the harpsichord, among keyboard instruments; the recorder, among the woodwinds; and the lute, among the plucked strings. After the recovery of these illustrious ancestors, other less well-known instruments have begun to reappear in our time. Among the plucked string instruments we should mention the vihuela, the baroque guitar, the renaissance guitar and the theorbo, instruments that can be heard and seen fairly frequently in concerts of early music. But there are still many other plucked-string instruments that, like Lazarus, await a voice to bring them back to life. One of the most enigmatic of these instruments is the angélique or angel harp.
Very little is known about this instrument. Moreover, the limited information available seems to be slightly confusing. There are two reasons for this; on the one hand, its external similarity with another contemporary instrument, the French solo theorbo and, on the other, the short life of the a
ngélique and its meager repertoire.
ngélique and its meager repertoire.The angélique may undoubtedly be classified within the family of the theorbos. The main external characteristic of this family is the fact that the instruments have two sets of tuning pegs. One set of strings is tied to the pegs that go over the neck and, therefore, are susceptible to be stopped by the left hand. The other set is tied to the upper part away from the neck and can only be open-plucked. But what distinguishes the angélique from its relatives is its tuning.
In lutes as well as in theorbos the basic principle for tuning the strings that go over the neck is the mixture of intervals of perfect fourth and third. The fourth predominates in the renaissance lute and the theorbo, while in the thirteen-course baroque lute the third is more common. The angélique, which usually had sixteen or seventeen single strings –ten over the neck and six or seven outside– was tuned in an unusual way, by diatonic seconds. In 1695, James Talbot, the scholar to whom modern organology owes so much, describes the tuning of the angélique. According to Talbot, the highest string will produce an E on the first line in the key of G; the second string, a D, the third, a C, and so forth, diatonically, until we reach the low string that will produce a D below the first additional low line in the key of F in instruments with sixteen strings and a C in seventeen-stringed instruments.
This tuning of a plucked-string instrument is unusual and astonishing. So much so, that we could almost speak of a cross between a diatonic harp and a lute. The listener can hear for himself that, because of this way of tuning, the touch of the angélique has an articulation that is somewhat slurred, similar to that of a harp. This is the reason why the angélique occupies such an unusual place within the group of plucked-string instruments with a neck. It does, however, have in common with them the action of the left hand and, with respect to the small French solo theorbo, the exact same tessitura: the lowest strings on both instruments reach a C two additional lines below the key of F, and the highest strings reach an E on the first line of the key of G.
The angélique flourished in the second half of the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth, although Praetorius mentions a plucked-string instrument with a neck, also tuned in diatonic seconds in 1612. Like others of its contemporaries, the angélique was less popular than the lute and the guitar and disappeared from the scene in a short time, leaving a scant repertoire. In addition to other sources, this repertoire is contained in the Béthune Manuscript, which takes its name from its compiler. The pieces for angélique on this disc are contained in this manuscript of ninety folios preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. The Béthune to which it refers is probably Michel de Béthune, a virtuoso and teacher of the angélique, born in 1607 and a resident of Paris in 1642. It could, however, refer to another member of the family, for it is known that several musicians with that surname were active in Sweden in the middle of the seventeenth century.
It is most likely that the angélique was born and began to be developed in Paris. At least, all the names associated with it in the middle of the seventeenth century are musicians who were active in this city: Jérôme Vignon and his son Nicolas-François, teachers of the angélique; Guillaume Jacquesson, performer and maker of angéliques and, of course, the Béthunes. Nevertheless, the Béthune Manuscript is associated with Alsatian musical circles, as François Lesure has shown. The instrument was not widely diffused outside Paris, although it was known by James Talbot, who based his descriptions on information provided by London musicians and instrument makers.
Talbot himself gives us one of the esthetic keys to the angélique when he writes that it is a particularly appropriate instrument for solemn and slow music, rather than for spritely agility, because of the great resonance of its strings. For this reason it was an instrument very much to the liking of French taste at that time. It is well-known that one of the most outstanding characteristics of French music written for plucked-string instruments is a certain noble and serene gravity, much praised by writers and musicians of the period.
The angélique has traditionally been thought of as an instrument for amateurs. This is not entirely accurate. Even though it seems to have flourished outside professional circles, the technique necessary to play it, and that of the right hand in particular, is far from simple. Perhaps for that reason its life was so short.
The small solo theorbo (théorbe de pièces) has a range identical to that of the angélique, as we have mentioned earlier. It was a very fashionable instrument among certain French Baroque composers and was tuned a perfect fourth above the lower theorbo, more commonly used for accompaniment.
[...] Transcription was a common practice in the French Baroque; almost all the great composers transcribed original pieces for other instruments, thus contributing to the development of the newly-born purely instrumental style. The sensitive musician can learn much from the study of instruments other than his own for, in art, as in all things human, it is that restlessness and curiosity about what is different, that most enriches us. For this reason, the French Baroque stands as one of the great moments in the history of instrumental music.
Gerardo Arriaga
Madrid, July 1997
Madrid, July 1997
