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Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices.

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John Travers. Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices. Edited by Emanuel Rubin. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 74.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, c2005. [Acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii-xvii; texts, p. xviii-xxi; 4 plates; score, 85 p.; crit. report, p. 87-89. ISBN 0-89579-567-1. $63.]

Emanuel Rubin's claim that the Georgian part-song repertory will "undoubtedly bring pleasure" (p. ix) to both singer and listener is rather hyperbolic in the context of notes for a scholarly modern edition, but the assertion is nevertheless nearly sustainable. With this volume in Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, Rubin reintroduces John Travers's superb Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices (London: John Simpson, 1746), written for various combinations of two or three voice parts and continuo. Originally available by subscription purchase or through lending libraries, and sung for entertainment in private gatherings at homes or in public singing clubs, these pieces will "bring pleasure" in a variety of present-day settings, from vocal studio, to recital stage, to participatory entertainment among amateurs. They would also enliven theater productions set in eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century England. Certainly, they deserve to be recorded, perhaps with a number of selections from the enormous and under-explored repertory to which they belong (secular genres known as glees, fa-las, madrigals, Neapolitans, ayres, songs, and still other appellations), or perhaps in a collection arranged by topic (mythical characters, love, pastoral scenes)...

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