Francis Cutting (1583-1603)
Sir Walter Raleigh's Galliard
The Squirrel's Toy-Cutting's Comfort
Mrs. Anne Markham's Pavan
Galliard
Quadro Pavan
My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home
Galliard (on Go from my Window)
Pavana Bray
Galliard
Almain
Pavan Sans Per
Galliard
Greensleeves
Galliard
Jig-Toy
Walsingham
Galliard
Sir Fulke Greville's Pavan
Galliard
Almain
Galliard
Packington's Pound

Domenico Cerasani, luth

Bien qu'il fût, d'après les documents de l'époque, un luthiste amateur et un compositeur marginal Francis Cutting (1550-1596) reste cependant une figure majeure de la période Elizabethaine. Auteur d'une cinquantaine de pièces pour luth dont plusieurs figurent dans le fameux "A new book of tabliture" de l'imprimeur William Barley (1596) qui comprenaient notamment les œuvres de Dowland et d'Holborne, Cutting méritait largement une monographie. Le programme du luthiste italien Domenico Cerasani donne ici un aperçu des pièces du compositeur (pavanes, gaillardes, variations...etc) en passant par les plus représentatives : Le Packington's Pound, Sir Fulke Greville's Pavan, Sir Walter Raleigh's Gaillard, et les variations sur Greensleeves. Elles montrent une variété de structure et d'ambiances qui traduisent une fraîcheur d'écriture libre et sans apprêts. De l'homophonie des gaillardes des Jig's et des toys sémillants et rustiques aux développement polyphoniques des Pavanes, plus introspectives, le style de Cutting se révèle assez singulier pour avoir suscité l'intérêt de l'interprète, offrant des idiomes distincts de ceux de ses contemporains Holborne en premier lieu. Domenico Cerasini les respecte à la lettre et s'emploie à restituer ces partitions avec esprit et doigté. Un disque utile. (Jérôme Angouillant)

The only available album dedicated to a notable musician of Elizabethan England. By the time of Francis Cutting’s death in 1596 he had become among the best-known of English lutenists, and but by then his reputation as a lutenist and composer had reached far beyond the Howard family of Catholic aristocrats whom he served. As a lutenist, Cutting was probably an amateur, not a professional musician, but his works show the hand of a skilful musician and composer. His music is characterized by a preference for intricate polyphony, although he also wrote light pieces using simple homophony. In the pavans and galliards we often find a complex interplay between chordal and imitative writing. Harmonically, Cutting’s music is sometimes forward-looking, with its extensive use of sequences and occasional flashes of harmonic daring. One or two of his pieces are often encountered in compilations of Elizabethan-era recitals on record. It is much more unusual to find extended sequences of his work, much less a whole album. Yet, when heard in the round, it becomes clear that Cutting’s music belongs with the great names of the Elizabethan golden age. The serious mood of his pavans, the vitality of his galliards, the gaiety of his almains, together with his personal harmonic idiom and his inventiveness in using counterpoint, imitation and sequences, are all sure signs of a gifted and often inspired composer. Now based in Switzerland as a professor of lute and guitar at the University of St Gallen, Domenico Cerasani won critical praise for his previous Brilliant Classics album dedicated to the The Raimondo Lute Manuscript of 1601.