Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nardò, Benedetto Serafico

(fl 1575–81). Italian monk and composer. The dedications of his two known works indicate that he was living at Naples in 1575 and at Lecce in 1581. Il primo libro delli madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1575, inc.) contains 27 works; it was prepared four years earlier for publication by the Neapolitan bookseller Orazio Salviani, but the manuscript was lost and Nardò made another copy, withdrawing some of the madrigals from the previous version and adding others. Il terzo libro di madrigali a cinque et a sei voci con un dialogo a dièce (Venice, 1581, inc.), dedicated to Francesco, Grand Duke of Tuscany, contains 22 pieces, setting poems by Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso and Tansillo. Many of Nardò’s texts are strongly erotic and passionate, and two pieces from the first book, Lamento d’Olimpia and Lamento di Fiordeliggi, are settings from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.

PIER PAOLO SCATTOLIN

Nares, James

(b Stanwell, Middlesex, bap. 19 April 1715; d London, 10 Feb 1783). English composer, organist and teacher. He was a chorister of the Chapel Royal, London, under Gates, and he afterwards studied under Pepusch. For a short time he assisted John Pigott, organist of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, immediately before assuming duties as organist of York Minster in August 1735. The formal minute of his appointment at York is dated 8 November 1735. He left York on his appointment (dated 13 January 1756) as one of the organists and composers of the Chapel Royal, and in 1757 he took the Cambridge degree of MusD. In October 1757 he succeeded Gates as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and took the choristers to sing in at least one theatrical production, Dibdin’s The Institution of the Garter, an afterpiece at Drury Lane that ran for 12 nights from 28 October 1771. He resigned from the post on 1 July 1780 while retaining his other Chapel Royal appointments. He was buried at St Margaret’s, Westminster.

Nares exercised his pleasant if slender talent for composition chiefly in the fields of church and keyboard music. His services, which do not represent him at his best, are in the dull ‘short service’ style as practised in his day, but have a slight interest in being possibly the earliest such compositions to add explicit changes of tempo to existing methods of giving variety to the setting of successive clauses. His Service in F, nonetheless, was very popular. His anthems throw almost the whole of their emphasis on music for solo voices, especially trebles. Very few indeed are of the ‘full’ type (examples are Call to remembrance and O clap your hands together), and for the most part he preferred to set even sombre and penitential texts as solos, duets and trios. His style is mellifluous and, if neither arresting nor individual, occasionally strikes an agreeable and expressive vein, particularly in music for boys’ voices, though in duets he was apt to rely overmuch on the charm of passages in 3rds. A survey of his anthems does not suggest that he is ill-represented by his most famous piece, The souls of the righteous, written during his time at Windsor.

His 1747 collection of Eight Setts of Lessons for the Harpsichord displays a certain interest in the keyboard as such, and no.5 has an interesting Larghetto which, after opening in A major, turns to A minor and then passes through F, B, G, B minor, G, C minor, A and C minor back to A. But none of his harpsichord compositions is more distinguished than the Lesson in B, no.3 of his op.2 (printed in full in OHM, iv, 328). The fifth lesson of the same set, in G, also has some appeal, and concludes, exceptionally for Nares’s harpsichord music, with a fugue. But this is not learned, an aspect more in evidence in his organ music. The ‘Sonata in Score’ included in op.2 is for two violins and continuo with an easy obbligato keyboard solo.

Nares’s most ambitious work, The Royal Pastoral (‘Damon and Delia’, libretto by Daniel Bellamy, published in his Ethic Amusements, 1768), consists chiefly of recitatives, arias and duets for the two characters, with two choruses in a somewhat Handelian vein and a full-scale overture. The instrumentation is for strings, horns, oboes and bassoons. Though it is always pleasant, there is nothing so memorable as to redeem such an extended work from insipidity. It appears to have been written for the anniversary in 1742 of the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The collection of Catches, Canons and Glees (which includes Nares’s attractive O fairest maid and Wilt thou lend me thy mare, as well as the Elegy from Shakespeare, Fear no more the heat of the sun for two sopranos and bass, afterwards extended by R.J.S. Stevens, and the 1770 Catch Club prize glee To all lovers of harmony) is designed to show that canons, no less than catches, can be ‘chearfull Music’.

Il principio or A Regular Introduction to Playing on the Harpsichord or Organ stresses the importance of early attention to shakes and to the development of the weak fingers. It also includes many attractive keyboard pieces. In his treatises on singing, Nares distinguished, in a manner casting some light on the history of solmization in England, between what he called French sol-fa (using the octave, and so much easier in application) and Italian sol-fa (which he described as ‘an ingenious Study for young People who intend to profess Music’). Both books contain the same useful details about vocal ornamentation.

WORKS

all printed works published in London

sacred vocal

only principal sources given; other MSS in GB-Cfm, Gu, Lbl, Lcm, Ob

Twenty Anthems in Score (1778) [TA]

A Morning & Evening Service … Together with Six Anthems in Score (1788) [ME]

GB-Lbl Add.19570 (Nares’s autograph) [JN]

GB-Lbl R.M.27.b–c–d (Chapel Royal Partbooks) [CR]

Services: Morning and Evening Service in C, ME; Morning and Evening Service in D, in Cathedral Music, ed. E. Rimbault (London, 1847); Morning and Evening Service in F, in Cathedral Music, ed. S. Arnold (London, 1790); Morning Service in G, part text in CR, completed by part text in GB-Ob

Anthems: Arise, thou judge of the world, 1764, TA, JN; Awake up, my glory, TA; Be glad, O ye righteous, 1765, insts added 1769, JN; Behold how good and joyful, 1765, TA, JN; Behold now praise the Lord, in Short Anthems, ed. W.H. Longhurst (London, 1849); Behold, O God, our defender, 1761, TA, JN; Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, in Harmonia sacra, ed. J. Page (London, 1800); Blessed is he that considereth the poor, in Cathedral Music, ed. S. Arnold (London, 1790); Blest who with gen’rous pity glows, ME; By the waters of Babylon, 1766, TA, JN

Call to remembrance, TA, ed. P. Young (New York, 1988); Do well, O Lord, 1757, JN; God is our hope, TA; Haste thee, O God (Canon, 4 in 1), part text in CR, completed by GB-Cfm; Have mercy upon me, rev. 1759, JN; Hide not thou thy face, TA; I have set God alway, inc., CR; I will magnify thee, CR; If the Lord himself, ME; In my prosperity, inc., CR; It is a good thing, 1764, TA, JN; Lord, how long wilt thou be angry?, 1771, TA, JN; Not unto us, Lord, Fall of Montreal, 1760, TA, JN

O clap your hands together, birth of George IV, 1762, JN; O come hither, CR; O come, let us sing, TA; O give thanks unto the God of heaven, 1768, TA, JN; O Lord, grant the king a long life, in Cathedral Music, ed. S. Arnold (London, 1790); O Lord my God, TA; O praise the Lord, 1746, rev. 1767, JN; O what troubles and adversities, ME; Praise the Lord, ye servants, EIRE-Dcc; Rejoice in the Lord, 1759, TA, JN; Save me, O God, part text in CR, completed by GB-GL; The eyes of the Lord, ME; The Lord hear me, 1766, JN

The Lord is my strength, king’s birthday, 1769, TA, JN; The Lord is righteous, birth of the Duke of York, 1763, TA, JN; The souls of the righteous, 1734, TA, JN, ed. C. Dearnley (London, c1985), ed. R. Lyne (Oxford, c1996); Thou art gone up on high, inc., CR; Thy praise, O God, ME; Try me, O God, in Cathedral Music, ed. S. Arnold (London, 1790), ed. W. Shaw (London, 1970), ed. D. Patrick (London, c1984); Turn thee again, O Lord, 1759, TA, JN; Turn us, O Lord, ME; Unto thee, O God, 1767, TA, JN; When the Lord turned again, 1758, JN; Wherewithall shall a young man cleanse his ways?, CR

Hymns and chants: ‘Eversley’, ‘St Chad’s’, ‘Westminster New’, in Parochial Music, ed. W. Riley (London, 1762); 2 single chants, A, CR; double chant, a, CR; double chant, D, GB-Lbl Add.31819

secular vocal

The Royal Pastoral (dramatic ode, D. Bellamy), solo vv, chorus, orch (c1769)

A Collection of Catches, Canons and Glees (c1775)

Hail, bright Cecilia, catch, Lbl Add.31463

instrumental

8 Setts of Lessons, hpd (1747)

These [5] Lessons … with a Sonata in Score, hpd, op.2 (1759); the sonata for 2 vn, bc, obbl hpd

6 Fuges with Introductory Voluntary’s, org/hpd (1772/R)

A Set of [3] Lessons, hpd (n.d.), lost, cited in ME

7 fugues, org/hpd, Cfm

pedagogical

Il principio or A Regular Introduction to Playing on the Harpsichord or Organ (London, ?1760)

A Treatise on Singing (London, ?1780/R)

A Concise and Easy Treatise on Singing, with a Set of English Duets for Beginners (London, ?1786)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BDA

Gentleman’s Magazine, liii (1783), 182 only

R. Nares: Preface to J. Nares: A Morning & Evening Service (London, 1788)

S. Arnold: ‘Memoir of Dr Nares’, Cathedral Music, iii (London, 1790), 64

P.D. Anderson: The Life and Works of James Nares (diss., Washington U., St Louis, 1968)

B.A.R. Cooper: English Solo Keyboard Music of the Middle and Late Baroque (diss., U. of Oxford, 1974)

H.D. Johnstone and R. Fiske, eds.: Music in Britain: the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1990)

WATKINS SHAW