Capriol Suite

Peter Warlock was a musicologist as well as a composer, and his short but striking Capriol Suite is a period fantasy based on melodies from Orchesographie: this was a famous 16th-century treatise on Renaissance dance music that took the form of an imagined dialogue with a man called Capriol. Warlock borrowed the name as a title for his piece, which he composed in 1926 initially for piano duet, though it was soon adapted for other forces, including a version for string orchestra that’s the one most often heard. Lasting scarcely more than 10 minutes, the Suite comprises six miniature dances recreated from antiquity with a smart synthesis of scholarship and imagination, restraint and indulgence, clothing their Renaissance tunefulness in modern harmonies. The lilting fifth, called “Pieds-en-l’air”, ends with an unmistakable Warlockian cadence; while the sixth, a sword-dance known as “Mattachins”, explodes with clashing rhythms that could easily be by Bartók.