Alia Vox CID AV9802 (67 minutes: DDD). Texts and translations included.

Mi senora Mariantarlos. Que se Ileva has almas. Aquella sierra nevada. Sin duda piensa menguilla. No piense menguil la ya. Sepan todos que muero. No se yo cOmo es. Al son de los arroyuelos. Le verdad de Perogrullo. Ojos pues me desdenais. Si quieres dar Marica en lo cierto. Tortolilla sino es por amor. Montes del Tajo escuchad. Nino como en trus mudancas.

Jose Mann was a guitarist and singer who, despite spending years dodging a term in the galleys for multiple murder, maintained a high popularity in late seventeenth-century Spain as a composer of secular songs, or tonos humanos. "His was a life worth living" states the insert-note to this recording of 14 of those songs, referring no doubt to Mann's somewhat Errol Flynn-like history, but listeners will have cause of their own to be thankful for his existence. Concerned almost exclusively with love, sex and longing, these jewels of the songwriter's art are by turns teasing and tortured, playful and poignant, expressing the manifold shades of love with almost bewildering subtlety. Like all the best popular songs, however, they are enjoyable for their sheer melodic charm and rhythmic vitality, even if one does not know precisely what the words are about.

Indeed, perhaps the best thing about these performances is the feeling that these songs could just as easily be the product of some superior modern ballad-composer as the work of a little-known Spanish composer who has been dead for nearly 300 years. There are no early-music obstacles here, just the timeless beauty of the human voice and sensitive accompaniment. Montserrat Figueras sings with lightness, clarity and, above all, communicativeness, while the various instrumental combinations of guitar, harp and gloriously Spanish-sounding percussion (including bells, castanets, clapping and stamping) help her to make the music really dance. Rolf Lislevand's sensitive and alert guitar playing is particularly captivating, and with the modern feel of these songs being enhanced on occasion by his use of a battente, or steel-strung guitar.

Rarely has Spanish baroque music sounded quite so Spanish as here; the extended vocalizations in Sepan todos clue muero I assume to have been added by the performers, but they are as evocative and welcome as a warming southern wind. This is a disc that I would recommend to anyone, and if Marin himself was able to perform these songs with the charm and resourceful quickwittedness of these musicians it is no wonder that he kept his freedom. LK