The "flute" involved in this album is a recorder, and the music is from England, which in the late seventeenth century just as now was the instrument's heartland among musical amateurs. The word "division" also has a specific meaning in this context: divisions were short variation sets that would unfold over a ground, one of the repeated bass lines that were absorbed from Italian and Spanish popular music into cultivated practice. These grounds were ubiquitous in Baroque music, from Bach's mighty Chaconne in the Partita No. ...
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The "flute" involved in this album is a recorder, and the music is from England, which in the late seventeenth century just as now was the instrument's heartland among musical amateurs. The word "division" also has a specific meaning in this context: divisions were short variation sets that would unfold over a ground, one of the repeated bass lines that were absorbed from Italian and Spanish popular music into cultivated practice. These grounds were ubiquitous in Baroque music, from Bach's mighty Chaconne in the Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin to Greensleeves, which appeared here in the form of Green Sleeves to a Ground (track 6). The Division Flute was a publication that appeared in two parts in late seventeenth century England; excerpts from both parts are presented here. Despite the fact that each piece on the album consists of one of these divisions, the music avoids monotony. The variation technique is consistently inventive, and in this connection it would have been nice to learn how...
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