The Early Music Club (EMC)

[haydnguy]

Thanks for the heads up on the Huelgas Ensemble/Van Nevel disk. I'll put it on my "to buy" list. 

[Coopmv]

Thanks for the heads up on the Huelgas Ensemble/Van Nevel disk. I'll put it on my "to buy" list. 

Pretty soon, half the GMG members and their cousins will have this set ...   

[Que]

Yet another Van Nevel disc...

 

And another absolutely great disc one as well. Flemish Cipriano de Rore (1515-1565) was another composer from the Low Countries that ended up in Italy, influencing the development of the Italian Renaissance and early Baroque. In this case de Rore's influence was crucial to the later Italian madrigal tradition of Gesualdo and Monteverdi. The disc here focuses on a selection of motets and madrigal, including de Rore's masterpiece Missa Praeter rerum seriem. But I agree with Brun Giordano below, that all pieces have a similar style that reminds of the later madrigal tradition, although especially in the Missa de Rore's Franco-Flemish roots are very clear.

Characterizing de Rore as a composer I would say his combine a very highly developed technical style with a serious, sober undertone and a strong emotionally expressive - text orientated - yet intimate feel. Quite intense - an aspect Gesualdo later would take one step (or even two steps) further - not for casual listening. Yet de Rore balances this out with touching, very "human" moments - the opening love song for 8 voices Mon petit cueur is a good example.

De Rore was already during his life time an acclaimed composer and many of his works were published and preserved for prosperity. But like with Perusio: were are the recordings!?  We need books and books of madrigals of this guy! Seems like a good project for La Venexia when they're done with Gesualdo.

An excerpt from Bruno Giordano's raving Amazon review:

Whatever 'faint praise' or carping criticism I may have heaped on an occasional non-favorite from The Huelgas Ensemble must be totally discounted in listening to this recording of music by Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565). The Missa Praeter rerum seriem is a major monument of late Renaissance polyphony; the more often I listen to it, the more musically profound it seems to me. This performance of it by The Huelgas Ensemble is likewise a monument of choral singing in our times, easily surpassing its competition from The Tallis Scholars.

You'll have to take my word for that, because my interest here is to comment on the seven shorter pieces by Cipriano recorded here - one French chanson, two Latin motets, two Italian motets, and "Calami sonum ferentes", listed as a madrigal but in Latin. In musical point of fact, all seven pieces are fully 'madrigalesque' and shockingly, radically 'modern' for music written before Gesualdo or Monteverdi were born! If anyone ever tells you that 'modern' music began with Cipriano, don't argue! He/she may be right.

As we usually experience with a perfectly matched ensemble of viols, the mixed voices of Paul Van Nevel's Huelgas-Ensemble roll out Cipriano de Rore's eight-part chanson Mon petit cueur like a plush, richly colored, deep-textured sonic carpet, one with no seams or flaws. This skillfully woven musical cloth offers the ear one sumptuous harmonic delight after another, as would a prized tapestry present similarly dazzling delights to the eye. This Flemish composer who spent most of his professional life in Italy (he died in 1565 at the age of 49) is yet another Renaissance figure of major importance whose work has remained largely unknown. Not only is he revered as a significant influence on composers such as Monteverdi (whose madrigals Alfred Einstein claims were "inconceivable without him"), but he is credited with successfully bringing together music and emotional expression in a way no one had done before.

If you wonder just what this means, listen to Mon petit cueur, or to the motet Plange quasi virgo, or the madrigal Mia benigna fortuna. All demonstrate the vital connection between human feeling and musical manifestation, where elements of sound--both of the words themselves and of various combinations of harmonies and textures--join with inflection and dynamic changes to create an overall mood far more compelling and deeply involving than a mere momentary sensation. In other words, there are no gimmicks or obvious, theatrical tricks at play. Rore's manner relies primarily on subtle and skillfully structured effects that grow from long melodic lines and underlying, rolling waves of harmony. Occasionally, as at the end of Mon petit cueur, a totally surprising chord gives our expectations a serious yet delightful jolt--and although this happens with some regularity throughout these pieces, we're never quite prepared for it.

The mass is a masterpiece, a stunning example of perfect proportion (overall and within movements), outstanding vocal writing, and ingenious use of varied textures and rhythmic shifts to control momentum and mood. The Huelgas-Ensemble has never been in better form, the voices vibrant and colorful, expressive in every context, from delicate and subtle (the madrigal Schiet'arbuscel) to profoundly meditative (the Agnus Dei of the mass) to more overtly dramatic (the madrigal Mia benigna fortuna). The music is uniformly excellent, and the ardent performances and ideal sonics pay it full and worthy tribute. Don't miss this--one of the year's more unusual and pleasant surprises. [4/5/2003] --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Q

[chasmaniac]

This disc is fantastic!

[The new erato]

This new issue seems a must-have:



TÓMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA

Sacred Works

Ensemble Plus Ultra

Michael Noone

CD1        Missa pro Victoria (1600); Missa pro Defunctis (1583); Psalms and Responsories
CD2        Lamentations of Jeremiah
CD3        MIssa Gaudeamus; Magnificat Octavi toni; Missa Ave maris stella
CD4        Missa de Beata Virgine; Motets: Vide speciosam, Gaude Maria virgo, Quam pulchra sunt
CD5        Missa Alma redemptoris Mater, Magnificat primi toni; Alma redemptoris Mater etc .
CD6        Missa O quam gloriosum, Christe redemptore omnium, Doctor bonus, Tibi Christe, etc.
CD7        Music  for the Easter Liturgy in Habsburg Madrid
CD8        Missa Ave Regina, motets and music for Vespers
CD9        Missa Salve and motets                               
CD 10     Motets and Hymns for the liturgical year

Universal Spain have, over recent years, been releasing new recordings of works by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611), who stands alongside Palestrina and Lassus as one of the greatest composers of his age. 

The recordings were made by  highly-regarded British Early Music group Ensemble Plus Ultra under Michael Noone ("a crack squad" –Early Music Today), who won critical acclaim for CDs of Morales and other Spanish composers on the Glossa label ("breathtakingly beautiful" – BBC Radio 3, CD Review).

Altogether, 10 CDs of Victoria's works have been released (the final two as recently as May 2011). Now we have seized the opportunity, in the year when we commemorate the 400th anniversary of Victoria's death (27 August), to bring all of these recordings together in a single box that forms a remarkable wide-ranging compendium of works mainly from the Madrid period of his life (1586–1611).

It is undoubtedly the largest collection available of Victoria's music, with over 90 works on the 10 CDs, including three masses and six Magnificats never previously recorded – as well as many of the favourite motets and masses of the Victoria canon.

These recordings have never before been available outside Spain. 

Deutsche Grammophon 10cds 4779747

[Que]

This new issue seems a must-have:



TÓMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA

Sacred Works

Ensemble Plus Ultra

Michael Noone

Indeed! Todd also spotted it a while ago (one page back).
What is new for me is that the recordings were issued in Spain before - how could I have missed that!

I have slight reservations about English ensembles in continental repertoire, but Noone and his ensemble seem to be the exception - their Guerrero Requiem is outstanding, as is their Morales "Assumption Mass". And a lot of Spanish performers involved in the project as well. Historic Spanish organs - sounds yummy.

Some additional info from the Ensemble Plus Ultra site:

Our series of ten CDs brings together a total of 42 musicians from more than five countries in recordings of more than 90 works by the greatest of the Spanish polyphonists. With the support of a team that included three recording producers and engineers, we spent more than 60 days in 2008 and 2009 recording more than 12 hours of music in such acoustically superb environments as the colegial church in Lerma, the iglesia de San Pedro in Tordesillas, and St Judes-on-the-hill in London.

In this exciting venture, we are joined by the specialist instrumentalists of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts (dir. Jeremy West), Spanish plainsong specialists Schola Antiqua (dir. Juan Carlos Asensio) and renowned organist Andrés Cea Galan who plays the historic organs of Tordesillas and Lerma. The series of recordings is a project of the Fundación Caja Madrid, and the CDs will appear on the DGG Archiv label. The entire project was directed by Michael Noone.

Though we are more accustomed to associating Victoria with his native Ávila or his adopted Rome, he is in fact the composer who can be most closely be associated with Madrid. During the more than a quarter of a century that he lived in the Spanish capital, he published almost one half of his entire compositional output. For this reason, we have recorded almost all of the works that Victoria published in his landmark publication of 1600, the Missae, Magnificat, motecta, psalmi et alia quam plurima published by the royal printer, Juan de Flandes. In addition, we have recorded many works—or previously unedited versions of works—by Victoria that are found only in manuscripts, that have been specially edited from those manuscripts for this project, and that have never before been recorded. Highlights in this category include the nine lamentations that are preserved in a Sistine Chapel manuscript and the 12 works (including three masses and six magnificats) from a manuscript choirbook at Toledo cathedral. Other previously unrecorded masterworks include Bovicelli's extraordinary virtuosic arrangement of Victoria's Vadam et circuibo and a large number of 'alternatim' works featuring verses for organ, plainsong and wind instruments.

Q

[Coopmv]

This new issue seems a must-have:

Just bookmarked the set on Amazon ...

[chasmaniac]

A terrific bargain if you're into this band. I like 'em lots.



Edited to add:

The vocal ensemble Cantus Colln led by Konrad Junghänel is one of the most famous European ensembles of its kind with over 30 CD recordings. Cantus Colln has won numerous international awards and is noted for including compelling performances of musical rarities as well as groundbreaking interpretations of the "classics" of the baroque repertoire.

The set from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi features 10 compact discs that were formerly unavailable, these collectible titles are now available at a low price in high quality packaging with the original cover art.

1. Rosenmüller: Sacri Concerti
2. Knüpfer, Schelle, Kuhnau: Thomaskantoren vor Bach
3. Monteverdi: Madrigali Amorosi
4. Pachelbel, J.C. Bach, J.M. Bach: Motetten
5. Monteverdi: Vespro della beata vergine - part 1
6. Monteverdi: Vespro della beata vergine - part 2
7. Lasso: Prophetiae Sibyllarum
8. Schütz: Psalmen, Motetten und Konzerte - part 1
9. Schütz: Psalmen, Motetten und Konzerte - part 2
10. Lechner: Sprüche von Leben und Tod

[kishnevi]

I know there aren't that many recordings, but there seems to be more than one alternative, so--does anyone have a recommendation for recordings of Salamone (Shlomo) Rossi--especially the Hebrew psalm and liturgical settings (HaShirim Asher L'Shlomo)?

[chasmaniac]

For no particular reason:



The first track, Salve flos Tusce gentis, might be my favourite recording of anything ever. And that after maybe a hundred listens.

[Que]

A brief note on this recording that coincidentally came my way:



I think it helps to get musical bearings on this probably little known Spanish Renaissance composer by mentioning his connection to a well known reference point for Early Music lovers (or it should be! ) in Early Iberian music: the musical collection of Misteri d'Elx. A collection to which Ginés Peréz de la Parra as choir master of the cathedral in Valencia contributed.

The music of the Office of the Dead consists in the complete collection of five vesper psalms with its own "Magnificat" and verse "Requiescant in pace", besides the first lesson "Parce mihi Domine" and two funeral motets by Peréz. All this music is preserved in the Valencia's Cathedral, and also in other archives, having been published in 1896 by Felip Pedrell. In addition, inserted between the psalms have been included two funeral motets of Ambrosio Cotes (1550?-1603) – successor of Pérez in the Valencia's cathedral - and Joan Baptista Comes (1582?-1643) – probable pupil and later chapel master of the Cathedral - and also a "Tiento de falsas" of Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia (1561-1627), a contemporary of Pérez.

Victoria Musicae led by Josep Ramón Gil-Tàrrega is a Spanish early music group based in Valencia. The group's primary area of activity is the performance of Spanish and in particular Valencian composers. José de Nebra (1702-1768), Ginés Pérez de la Parra (1548-1600), Joan Baptista Comes (1582-1643) and Ambrosio Cotes (c.1550-1603), and chapel masters of the Real Colegio del Corpus Christi in Valencia during the 17th Century.[6]

For me this is a very nice find: Peréz' style is simple and straight-forward yet artfully and intelligently crafted and balanced. What strikes me is the gentle, touching feel to the music. It is not by far as severe as can be expected from music from that period. Gil-Tàrrega and his ensemble do a nice job - it definitely has an unforced air of authenticity over it. The recording is OK, Vernier below rates it with an 7 - I have less issue with it. Recommended for those who want to explore the Spanish Renaissance further and like a different flavour.

This recording was previoudly issued on Ars Harmonica, now a subsidiary label of La Mà de Guido. David Vernier's review (8/7) on Classicstoday:

For a variety of reasons--some purely musical, others related to circumstances of history--many perfectly fine composers of the Renaissance period have remained in virtual obscurity. One such is 16th-century Spanish composer Ginés Pérez, who achieved a certain stature in his home territory of Valencia but, as the liner notes point out, due to local inadequacies of music printing and the fact that he didn't travel beyond the region, his music was not widely disseminated. As this recording shows--these works have never before been recorded--Pérez was a highly competent master of contemporary liturgical form and style, setting texts such as the Salve Regina in easily flowing lines and sonorous harmonies.
In the music for the Office for the Dead, the major "work" on this program, Pérez employs varieties of vocal and instrumental combinations and builds his vocal textures with liberal use of homophonic structures. What's most striking is the solidity, the seeming inevitability of the harmonic progressions and the skilled voicing that imbues these works with bright, richly resonant sound. Psalm 120 and the Parce mihi, Domine in the Office of the Dead are excellent examples of this, but other instances abound, not least of which occur in the several purely instrumental sections (performed on shawm, sackbut, flute, cornett, organ). In its straightforward simplicity Pérez's Magnificat is as powerful and moving a setting as many I can think of that bear far more famous authorship.
The choir, part of the Spanish early-music group Victoria Musicae, has a refined ensemble technique and its well-balanced sound is captured in a slightly too bright, resonant acoustic that lets voices and instruments ring. These singers and their excellent instrumental partners are effective advocates and make a strong case for more attention to this unknown composer's work. All is not perfect: both singing and playing at times suffer from sagging intonation, and phrase endings aren't always ideally, uniformly shaped. But these are small lapses in otherwise strongly recommendable performances.

Q

[chasmaniac]

.[asin]B004IXP5P0[/asin]

Words fail me.

[Que]

[asin]B004IXP5P0[/asin]

Words fail me.

That good? What pieces are on it?

Q

[chasmaniac]

That good? What pieces are on it?
Q

All of Dufay's isorhythmic motets:

O sancte Sebastiane
Vasilissa ergo gaude/Concupivit rex decorum tuum
Rite maiorem Jacobi
Ecclesie militantis
Basalmus et munda cera
Supremum est mortalibus bonum
Nuper rosarum flores
Salve flos Tusce gentis
Fulgens iubar ecclesiae dei
Moribus et genere
O gemma lux
Apostolo glorioso
Magnanime gentis laudes


Classicstoday review:

Modern ears have been subjected to a sound world so complex and chaotic--and just plain noisy--that it's impossible for us now to really appreciate the original contextual significance of works such as these 15th century motets of Guillaume Dufay. We can enjoy them on many levels and we can intellectually understand their importance, but when we hear these very complex rhythms, and harmonies that often have a strange, vacant quality, we can't erase from our memory the fact that we've heard Brahms and Ives and Stravinsky. But I picked those three composers because each owes something to Dufay and to others who wrote in ancient forms and styles, in this case the isorhythmic motet. Much like Bach's works were at the same time a summation and epitomization of the Baroque, so were these motets of Dufay in their way a final, ultimate statement regarding one of the more sophisticated musical forms of the Middle Ages. Simply put, the isorhythmic motet begins with a particular rhythmic formula or pattern that's applied to a melody in one or more voices and repeated several times throughout the piece. The structure can get quite complicated, especially if different rhythmic formulas are used for different voices, making for irregular patterns of repetition. Dufay was a master of this compositional technique and as you listen you can see why later composers looking for interesting new ideas would have found very fertile ground among pieces like these. Conductor Paul Van Nevel organizes the program chronologically so the careful listener can follow the gradual stylistic changes Dufay employed from first motet to last--a range of approximately 20 years. His singers and instrumentalists, the always intriguing, musically polished, and stylistically informed Huelgas Ensemble, just seem to revel in the music--somehow reaching back to that motorless, unplugged time where no sound was amplified or transmitted except by means of natural acoustics, where voices and instruments were commonly heard resonating from stone and wood. And we get that too, thanks to Harmonia Mundi's skillful miking in the suitably ancient, resonant space of l'Abbaye-aux-Dames.


--David Vernier

[Opus106]

Via a Gramophone newsletter:

To celebrate 10 years of The Sixteen’s lively and successful record label, CORO, and to mark the launch of our new downloads site www.thesixteendigital.com we are delighted to offer you a FREE download of one of our most popular CDs - Venetian Treasures - featuring glorious Italian choral music.

http://the-sixteen.org.uk/page/3230

[Que]

How do you like this CD?  I bought the CD early in the year ...

I know! I think it makes interesting comparison with the ensemble's earlier recordings in the 1980's for Harmonic Records, later reissued on Cantus. There is fortunatley little overlap. This new effort won a Grand prix du disc and got a 10/10 at Classicstoday France. A decidedly less favourable review in BBC Magazine.

I think my sentiments are best summed up by Todd McComb on medieval.org, who named the recording Recording of the year 2004:

Dominique Vellard and Ensemble Gilles Binchois established a standard for Notre Dame polyphony with their two previous recordings from the 1980s & 1990s. Returning to this repertory in the 2000s, including a re-recording of Beata viscera, they continue to set standards.

The current recording adopts a more aggressive articulatory stance, and firmer diction. There is still an elegance to the phrasing & overall shaping, but any tentativeness is increasingly stripped away. The program itself is a good one, including some variety in form, starting with Perotin's massive Sederunt principes. Overall, including the programs, I cannot rate this disc as dramatically better than the earlier two, but it does represent a notable development of style. This remains pivotal repertory for Western music.

I think the new recording is harder to get into than the earlier recordings, which I still love and are not surpassed by the new one. But the new recording has less emphasis on the longer lines and more emphasis on details and nuances of articulation and phrasing. Beautifully sung. The effect is less shock and awe, more intimate but needs as a consequence more attentiveness when listening. A touch slower, less pressed as well. Could sound tiresome and/or underwhelming to some ears.

It's all a matter of taste. But it's clear in what direction Vellard is going: less "high cathedrals" more  monastic IMO.

For a first acquintance with the Notre Dame School, I would still recommend the earlier recording:



Q

[Que]

A disc that I picked up due to Amazon's Bruno Giordano's mentioning the German group Stimmwerck as one of his favourite ensembles (together with A Sei Voci, Cinquecento, Sound & Fury and others).

A blurb on Heinrich Finck:
(b Bamberg, 1444 or 1445; d Vienna, 9 June 1527). German composer. After training as a choirboy in Poland he travelled widely in search of an appointment. Between 1498 and c 1510 he served in the chapel of Prince Alexander of Lithuania, first in Vilnius, then (when Alexander became King of Poland in 1501) in Kraków. He was subsequently 'Singemeister' of the ducal Kapelle in Stuttgart (1510-14), a household musician to Cardinal M. Lang in Mühldorf (1516-19) and after 1519 composer to the Salzburg Cathedral chapter. Much of his music is lost but several masses, motets and motet cycles, hymns, songs and instrumental pieces survive. His creative life spans three generations: his early style, with its difficult melismatic lines, is rooted in the first flowering of German polyphony but his later works, with their full textures, show him to have assimilated the 'modern' styles of music written after 1500 by Isaac, Josquin and others.

His great-nephew, Hermann (1527-58), an organist in Wittenberg, wrote Practica musica (1556), a treatise on rudiments that gives examples from over 80 works by leading composers.

This is my first acquaintance with Early German repertoire. It is very pretty. Obviously influenced by the Franco-Flemish School, but with a local flavour. Heinrich Finck clearly holds his own. On the disc is the Missa Domenicalis from Finck's later years and a number of secular songs. Bruno was right about this ensemble - their singing is expressive and their voices fit extremely well together and sound ravishing. They have a superb countertenor in their midst, Franz Vitzthum. A very gifted ensemble, which is crucial for the music to succeed in Early Music.

This disc got the full five stars in the now sadly defunct magazine Goldberg, the review doesn't seem to be on the web anymore. Hoverer, here is a on Musicweb International. The disc sis hard to find but seems still available at the Stimmwerck website.

Stimmwerck did this disc and another with music by Adam von Fulda  on Cavalli Records, and then switched to Aeolus. Their disc with music from the Codex St. Emmeran, a collaboration with organist Leon Berben, is next on my shopping list!

Q

[The new erato]

Que; waiting for that disc to drop into my mailbox any minute now. Re early German repoertoire; you dont know Senfl and Isaac? There's a fine Isaac disc on Bongiovanni with the Missa La Spagna.

[jlaurson]

Que; waiting for that disc to drop into my mailbox any minute now. Re early German repoertoire; you dont know Senfl and Isaac? There's a fine Isaac disc on Bongiovanni with the Missa La Spagna.

...and this is one of the finest Senfl discs there is!




L. Senfl
Missa L'homme Arme
Suspicious Cheese Lords
SCL 002

[Que]

Que; waiting for that disc to drop into my mailbox any minute now.

Good! Hope you are doing well after your operation, BTW.

Re early German repoertoire; you dont know Senfl and Isaac? There's a fine Isaac disc on Bongiovanni with the Missa La Spagna.

Totally uncharted territory!   So, any tips are welcome. 

Thanks Jens, for mentioning that disc by the American ensemble with the hilarious name.

Q