Lucie Strejcová - soprano
Barbora Hulcová - Baroque lute
Magda Uhlířová - viola da gamba

Thomas Campion, an English composer, lutenist, poet, and physician who lived from 1567 to 1620, was one of the most prolific lutenists and poets of the Elizabethan era. During his lifetime he wrote a total of 118 ayres, which were published in five volumes. In addition to writing poetry collections and composing ayres, he also composed music for the so-called masque. Campion wrote all the text templates by himself, which he subsequently used in all his song collections. Although he was able to combine lyrics with music better than any other English composer, his work was criticized for a lack of creative originality and musical variety. In this respect, he was often compared to his famous contemporary John Dowland. However, it should be noted that Campion, unlike Dowland, composed his works as an ardent music enthusiast and his main livelihood was not music, but medicine. With the passage of time, however, we can confidently state that Campion's less complicated compositional style was unique and highly original. Many of Campion's songs transcended his conventional approach, and many became outstanding musical examples of lute and singing literature.

 

On this CD Aphorisms in Music Lute songs by Thomas Campion, 20 selected songs of Campion's third song collection are recorded. The Third Booke of Ayres contains a total of 29 songs that have a strophic form and are set for solo voice (cantus), lute or orpharion and bassus. The bass part is accompanied by playing the viola da gamba. All text works included on this CD are written in the original "old" English, which in many ways differs from modern English. The Fantasia for viola da gamba was composed by Magda Uhlířová for this CD, and the song Breake now my heart and dye became its main theme. This compact disc also contains ayres that have not been recorded and taped by anyone so far. We can humbly argue that this is a kind of rebirth of the lute songs, which are Now let her change, Were my heart as, If Love loves truth and Silly boy 'tis full moon yet.

"All these Songs are mine if you expresse them well, otherwise they are your owne."             __ Thomas Campion, 1617
 

Lucie Strejcová graduated from the Conservatory in Pardubice under the supervision of Hana Medková and Michiyo Keiko. She continued to study classical singing at the University of Hradec Králové in the class of Jan Kyselák and Markéta Štefaniková. She expanded her music education by studying Music Composition and Music Performance at Georgia College in Milledgeville, USA. Since 2010, she has been teaching voice at ZUŠ Jitro in Hradec Králové. From 2017 to 2021, she collaborated with the Prague singing ensemble Collegium 419 and since 2017 she has been a member of EnRe, an ensemble based in Hradec Králové, that focuses on the madrigal work of Claudio Monteverdi. She completed master singing courses with lecturers such as Joel Frederiksen, Emma Kirkby, Andreas Scholl, Jürgen Banholzer, Tehila Goldstein, Markéta Cukrová, etc. In 2018, she was accepted to Doctoral Program, Music theory and pedagogy, at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. She likes to devote herself to solo and chamber concerts of sacred or secular music, with emphasis on the historically informed interpretation of Early Music. In 2020, she participated in the recording of the CD North Bohemian Music with soprano Dagmar Zelenková and pianist Václav Krahulík.

Barbora Hulcová studied classical guitar at the Grammar and Music School of the Capital City of Prague under the supervision of Václav Kučera and later Karel Fleischlinger at P. J. Vejvanovský Conservatory in Kroměříž respectively. She continued to play the Renaissance lute at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno under Jan Čižmář. In 2018/2019, she completed an exchange stay at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen in Germany, where she was subsequently accepted to study in the class of Rolf Lislevand. She regularly participates in international interpretation courses both as a soloist (Joachim Held, Nigel North, Paul O'Dette, Michael Fields, Evangelina Mascardi, Cristián Gutiérrez, Jan van Elsacker, etc.) and as a member of ensembles (Czech Ensemble Baroque, Collegium Marianum, Collegium 419). With the Du Vergissmeinnicht (Antje Becker - traverso, Barbora Hulcová - theorba) she was selected to the finals of the Early Music Young Ensemble Competetion 2018 in London. In 2021, she participated in the recording of two CDs, one of Italian Baroque repertoire with a singer Magdalena Podkościelna and the other with the Czech Ensemble Baroque she recorded Requiem by F. I. A. Tůma.

Magda Uhlířová had studied Musicology at Masaryk University in Brno and then began studying viola da gamba. She continued her studies in Leipzig at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Musikhochschule in the class of Irene Klein and then in Bremen at the Hochschule für Künste with Hille Perl. She has participated in several international courses in which she collaborated with artists such as Paolo Pandolfo, Wieland Kuijken and Marianne Müller. She subsequently expanded her music education at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg with Vittorio Ghielmi. In January 2020, she released a profile CD entitled Fantasy on Folk Songs at ARTA publishing house that contains original compositions for solo viola da gamba and arrangements of folk songs accompanied by her singing. She also participated in the recording of CDs - About Death and Merry, Songs of Jesus, Advent songs from Czech baroque cancionales, Lauda puer Dominum, Codex Jacobides. Since 2012, she has been a director of ZUŠ Nová Paka where she is intensively involved in music and ensemble playing. She is the founder of the Improfest Music Festival, which focuses on music, dance, and art improvisation.