Music archive entry

Lugubria is a small province in southern Albania, whose Italianised name is the result of its many years as a colony of the Venetian Republic - abruptly terminated by the Ottoman Turkish conquest of 1776. The local Albanian majority and Greek-speaking minority have freely absorbed musical influences from these imperial cultures, borrowed musical ideas from one another, and absorbed motifs and ideas from the small Roma and Macedonian populations in some parts of the provinces, as well as from the former Ladino-speaking (mediaeval Spanish) Jewish population who lived there from their expulsion from Spain in 1493 until the Nazis came. The result is a folk music or remarkable variety, but with the common element that the songs and dances frequently end inconclusively. These four dances reflect the music of this little known region.

The key to the successful performance of these pieces will be to establish the rhythms very clearly - they are irregular and frequently changing, and the pieces will hang together if each player observes them carefully.

Care should be taken to observe the dynamics, since these may vary between parts in order to bring out the main line. In the third Dance in particular, there is nearly always one instrument marked louder than the others, and it should be allowed to come through.