Dalla Casa MS. Vol. 2 CD Project

Five years ago, I embarked on a journey of discovering and recording the music in the Dalla Casa Manuscript, a book of music compiled and written down by Filippo Dalla Casa, an amateur musician living in Bologna in mid-18th-century (the manuscript is dated 1759). The collection is remarkable as being one of the few sources of music for baroque mandolin and archlute from this era and for the high quality of music it contains. The first CD, containing music for baroque mandolin which I recorded with John Schneiderman accompanying on archlute, was released in 2010 to great critical acclaim. Now, I have been working on the second volume, which will contain solo music for archlute.

The first CD containing music for mandolin contained music that was recorded for the first time ever. The second CD for archlute, I believe, would be a world premier recording... to my knowledge, none of the pieces have been recorded and commercially available. Because of the high quality of the music, I believe this music should be out there for the world to hear. I am hoping that it would resonate with the lute world specifially, but also with the early music world in general. The composers represented are very obscure; many of the pieces are anonymously written, and others are by unknown composers. The only exception might be a short march by Leonardo Leo, whose name aficionados of the baroque might recognize. Nevertheless, the quality of the music is very high, representing the most idiomatic, expressive writing in stile galant for the instrument, which is why I firmly believe that this recording should be out there and heard by lovers of lute and 18th-century music.

The CD is already recorded; this happened in August, 2013. I have finished editing as of Dec. 9, and will soon do the mastering. The next step is to do the layout for the packaging and to write liner notes, both of which I will be doing myself.

I am trying to raise $1200, which is the cost of replication for 1000 CDs. I don't need to raise money for the recording, editing, mastering, graphic design, liner notes, etc. because I do all that myself. I learned to do all of these things because of financial necessity; it would have cost thousands of dollars to hire people to do all of these--money I could ill afford to spend, and this CD would never have seen the light of day. The money I raise will go towards the last, and least expensive, piece of the puzzle: the production of the physical CDs. Any amount over $1200 will go towards the shipping of the CDs (it is expensive to ship 1000 CDs!) and promotion. Also, this is not an all-or-nothing campaign, so I will still get the money even if it doesn't reach the goal, and you will still get your CDs!

What you get in return: the final product when it's done! I have set up multiple donation levels for those of you who would like to have multiple copies--the first copy is $16 ($18 if you're outside the US), and each subsequent copy is less. Of course, if you would rather have a copy of a different CD than multiple copies of the same CD, that would be fine also. Go to http://www.hyamaya.com/ for a list of available CDs. If all goes according to plan, the CD should be ready for production by the end of December. I can't make any promises, but I hope to send out the CDs in January 2014! There is no set deadline for this fundraising effort, but I will shut it down once the CDs are physically done and I send them out to donors. After that you can buy the CDs directly through me or through my website.

Thank you so much for your interest in this project. I am committed to seeing this through, so this will get done no matter what, but I would really love for you to be a part of this: getting unknown, undiscovered, great music out into the world!


Hideki