Emma Curtis, The Frolick - Calliope: Volume The First - English Songbooks of the 1700s (2006)

The music on this two-disc set can fairly be said to represent the taste of the average London entertainment consumer in the middle of the eighteenth century. All of it is taken from a songbook called Calliope, published in 1739; English contralto Emma Curtis devised the whole concept, sings songs from both female and male perspectives, is shown in the 80-page booklet in an entertaining variety of period costumes, and wrote all the booklet notes herself. The song texts and the main body of the booklet are translated into French and German, but Curtis' individual notes to each song are not -- and it's here that the real fun begins. Curtis is the type of presenter who overflows with both knowledge and enthusiasm for her subject, and she is extraordinarily successful here in taking the listener into the world she knows. These songs might be called semi-popular. Composers like Handel and Purcell share the book's pages with Henry Carey, John Frederick Lampe, and the famed Anonymous. Many of the pieces by the "name" composers are instrumental tunes to which someone later added words (an example is A Song to a Favorite Minuet of Geminiani, CD 1, track 9). Curiously the book seems not to have included anything from the top homegrown hit of the day, The Beggar's Opera, although several songs come from productions that gave it competition. Some of the songs were freestanding entities (or have come down to us as such), but most were part of stage entertainments -- songs from plays, pastoral comedies, masques, or operas, all of which had both spoken and musical aspects. Many songs' comic and melancholy takes on love wouldn't be too far out of place on today's pop charts if you replaced the kisses with sexual encounters, but others comment on the entertainment scene itself. The triumph of English over Italian music forms the subject of several songs -- the leading castrati, who fascinated female audiences, had left England by the late 1730s, and a few of these hit songs lamented their departure (The Lady's Lamentation for the Loss of Senesino, CD 2, track 3, is one). Other songs seem to adumbrate details of later popular song traditions: the country girl who puts on big-city styles in order to snag herself a prosperous husband makes several pert appearances, the Scotch songs that hit their peak a century later are already in abundance here, and even Corrina, the woman beloved of bluesmen, makes an offstage appearance. Many songs are flat-out funny; Maurice Greene's The Fly and The Flea just have to be heard to be believed. As for flies in the ointment, tracks 8 and 20 of CD 1, both called The Coquet (The Coquette) are reversed in the booklet. Other coquettes worthy of the Britney Spears of "Oops! I Did It Again" are delivered with maximum effectiveness by Curtis, who sings directly and clearly in a voice that one imagines was perfectly appropriate for the London drawing-rooms in which these songs would originally have been performed -- the voice of a young and talented stage actress, perhaps, the equivalent of the musical-theater newcomer of our own time. This is apparently the first volume of an eventual set; one awaits subsequent releases as Phyllis awaits her handsome swain -- with bated breath.