Composer of whimsical mood even in the cannon's mouth

By WILLIAM DART


Not all soldiers temper the tedium and terror of the battlefield by singing bawdy ballads. The 17th-century Scottish soldier-composer Tobias Hume took along his viol and bowed away the stress of the day with whimsical pavans and gallant galliards.

Jordi Savall's recording of Hume's Musicall Humors entraps the eye before it seduces the ear with Nicholas Hilliard's cover portrait of a languid courtier.

Savall's taste in art is complemented by a near military prowess in cracking the code of Hume's tablature and making this music spring to life. Using a sweet-toned 1697 viola da gamba, he plays with a rare and airy grace.

There are tearful laments (Beccus an Hungarian Lord) and dances with a real spring in their step (Soldier's Galliard).

Hume seems to have been an adventurer on his instrument as well as in martial matters if the bouncing col legno in A Soldier's Resolution is any indication. Apart from Hume's music, the joys are threefold: Savall's artistry, a recording of great presence and the usual handsome AliaVox packaging. "You cannot present this music in plastic," is Savall's droll explanation.

Three centuries after Hume, the battle for Englishman Robin Milford was trying to survive as a composer.

Milford, who died in 1959 at the age of 54, studied under Holst and Vaughan Williams, and this is evident in his rather wistful music on the Hyperion CD Fishing by Moonlight. Predominantly for string orchestra - and beautifully played by the Guildhall Strings, led by Robin Salter - this is music of a period that, though relatively recent, will seem remote to many.

A duke is paid a homage in one piece, and another work is launched by a delicate setting of Robert Louis Stevenson's Go, little book, sung by the clear-voiced Carys Lane. In yet another piece, the traditional song Drink to me only is given a witty workout.

The understated beauty of Milford's music has real character, and a work like Fishing by Moonlight manages some fetching harmonic twists in its dreamy Siciliana. In fact, had it been written three centuries earlier, Jordi Savall's viola da gamba might have fitted in very nicely.

* Tobias Hume, Musicall Humors (AliaVox AV 9837) through Elite Imports Robin Milford, Fishing by Moonlight (Hyperion CDA 67444)