Erik Bosgraaf - Adriana - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The forgotten figure of a 17th-century Dutch recorder virtuoso, illuminated by a unique synthesis of art history, scholarship and modern musicianship. Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Flute's Pleasure Garden, or Garden of Delights) is a collection of music for recorder compiled by Jacob van Eyck and published in Amsterdam by Paulus Matthijsz. It is the largest collection of music for a single wind instrument ever published by a single composer, and has supplied recorder players, amateurs and professionals, with music for reflection and entertainment ever since the publication of it's initial volume in 1644, as Der goden fluit-hemel (The Gods' Flute-Heaven). An overlooked detail is the dedication of the first volume, to Adriana vanden Bergh, who is extravagantly compared to the muse Euterpe in a four-line poem 'Euterpe's spirit was reborn, or so it did appear, / Whene'er the sound of ADRIANA's Fluyt I chanced to hear / A wonder of our century, that such a youthful lass / Wears in the name of all the maidens laurels on Parnas.' Who was Adriana vanden Bergh? This book and CD tells the full and fascinating story, shedding light along the way on many aspects of culture, religion and everyday life in Amsterdam during the 17th century. As both a musicologist and art historian, Thiemo Wind is uniquely placed to tell this story. He has identified Adriana as the subject of a famous painting by Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608/09-1651), hitherto anonymous but considered one of the most beautiful portraits of the Dutch Golden Age. Through original research, Thiemo Wind has assembled an eventful biography, which moves in short and lively chapters, each of them illustrated with a telling image, from Adriana's family background to her birth in 1631, her complex religious inheritance of both Protestant and Catholic observance, her apparently rapid mastery of the recorder, her participation in