Peter Holman - Ben Jonson's The Masque of Oberon (reconstruction) /Musicians of the Globe * Pickett

Worthy reconstruction of Renaissance Courtly Dance Music

The text of `The Masque of Oberon' is credited to the great Elizabethan dramatist, Ben Jonson with music written by many Renaissance composers, including the namesake of the great blues performer, Robert Johnson.

On the one hand, this recording is not of a single work, but rather of a reconstruction of a work from a great many different pieces. There was a genuine `masque' with this title written by Ben Jonson, but almost everything but the bare bones text has been lost.

To understand how much was lost, you must know that a Renaissance `masque' was a series of courtly dances. The most famous story about masques, of course, is Edgar Allen Poe's `Masque of the Red Death' which was not at all about a masked ball. As the notes to this recording explain, a masque was so highly scripted and choreographed as to be virtually a play in itself, with the parts being played by the members of the court and the artistic professionals it employed such as musicians and dancing masters.

In spite of the patchwork nature of the piece, it is really much more of a whole than the other recording I know of done by Musicians of the Globe, lead by Philip Pickett. This `Shakespeare's Musick' recording, also on Phillips, is much more obviously a collection of snippits with a lot of historical reconstruction done to make it a playable piece.

Thus, if you are really interested in Renaissance dramatic music, this is a more enjoyable introduction than any collection of Shakespeare's incidental music I have heard.
December 2, 2005

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