Guillaume Dufay

[vers la flamme]

At the local record store, I am frequently seeing a Musical Heritage Society CD by David Munrow directing the Early Music Consort, the music is all Dufay. I always pick it up and then eventually pass up on it, usually justifying this by the fact that I hate MHS reissues. Has anyone heard it? Any good?

Edit: it's a MHS reissue of this:

[Mandryka]

Has anyone heard it? Any good?

You know it's on YouTube? You should check it out first because only you can say how you'll respond to James Bowman's voice. Munrow is an important figure in the post war reception history of medieval music, with an interesting and disturbing life story. He makes the mass sound like a grand occasion by helping the singers along with a bit of brass. The sound is not wonderful but perfectly listenable.

[Biffo]

At the local record store, I am frequently seeing a Musical Heritage Society CD by David Munrow directing the Early Music Consort, the music is all Dufay. I always pick it up and then eventually pass up on it, usually justifying this by the fact that I hate MHS reissues. Has anyone heard it? Any good?

Edit: it's a MHS reissue of this:

Having reread your posting I realised I can't be of much use. The original issue was on LP in 1974 and I bought it ca. 1980. Listening to the LP I find it admirably clear but I have no idea how the CD remastering sounds. I haven't heard it for years and it brought back memories. How you find individual voices is very personal; I have no problems with James Bowman.

I have Munrow's Music of the Gothic Era on CD but it is a DG Archiv Blue reissue not MHS

[vers la flamme]

You know it's on YouTube? You should check it out first because only you can say how you'll respond to James Bowman's voice. Munrow is an important figure in the post war reception history of medieval music, with an interesting and disturbing life story. He makes the mass sound like a grand occasion by helping the singers along with a bit of brass. The sound is not wonderful but perfectly listenable.

Well, you've piqued my interest anyway. Going to find it on youtube. Probably end up buying the CD in any case. I think it's $2.

Edit: I read the overview of Munrow's life on wikipedia. Wow, you weren't kidding. If you're familiar with any further reading material, feel free to send it my way. I have a morbid fascination with doomed artists.

[Mandryka]

Missa se la face est pale has been recorded many times, I may even be missing some. It's based on a nice memorable tune. Some of these performances are really fabulous I think, they make it sound like very great music. Some are less successful.

Laudantes
Clemencic
Hilliard
Planchart
Diabolus in Musica
Cut Circle
Colegium Aurium
Cantica Symphonia
Binchois Consort
Munrow



This is an interesting performance of Dufay's Mass se la face est pale. It sounds both attractive and alien, the pitch makes the harmonies exciting to hear, and the soprano voices never dominate. Straight singing, humbly (rather than swaggeringly) projected. The tactus is slow enough to let the gestures have their effect. The brass brings splendour and a sense of thrill, without collapsing into bling.

[Mandryka]

What makes the Dufay (?) mass very special for me is that it's set for a maximum of three parts. And that gives it a sort of stripped down beauty, as if something is being exposed, laid bear, rather than embellished. This feeling is in part due to their cappella small scale approach.


I got the recording out to listen to the Binchois, but in fact I got completely caught up in the mass, which is long - there are polyphonic propers as well as ordinaries. The music, by the way, is of uncertain attribution. It makes me think of the Ockeghem requiem.

The vocal range of the music seems high. They use altos. The style is intense, sometimes inward looking and sometimes more dramatic and brilliant than that suggests, and those contrasts are something I appreciate. The sound engineering is rather fine.

[vers la flamme]

Well I got the Munrow CD. The performance is all superb. It includes a short Gloria, the chanson "Se la face ay pale" in several vocal and instrumental versions, and the mass that it spawned. Wow, this mass is absolutely beautiful. This may be the greatest recording of a Renaissance Mass that I've ever heard. The inclusion of subtle instrumental accompaniment is so powerful. The sound is reverberant and glorious. I think you're right, @Mandryka, that this performance makes it sound like very great music.

Definitely going to seek out more Dufay, and more of Munrow's recordings.

[Mandryka]

If you get in Dufay, the more I listen to it, the more I'm convinced that the one released this year by The Orlando Consort is interesting, because it's so incredibly introverted. No one else does the music in such a rapt way.

Over the past few weeks I've been revisiting all the secular Dufay and Ockeghem recordings I know. I mean, the songs, chansons. Though I must say that Anthony Abbot mass I mentioned here a couple of days ago, which may not in fact be by Dufay at all, has been a major distraction from this project because it's so wonderful, it has really caught my imagination for some reason.

[The new erato]

Well I got the Munrow CD. The performance is all superb. It includes a short Gloria, the chanson "Se la face ay pale" in several vocal and instrumental versions, and the mass that it spawned. Wow, this mass is absolutely beautiful. This may be the greatest recording of a Renaissance Mass that I've ever heard. The inclusion of subtle instrumental accompaniment is so powerful. The sound is reverberant and glorious. I think you're right, @Mandryka, that this performance makes it sound like very great music.

Definitely going to seek out more Dufay, and more of Munrow's recordings.

It was the one disc that converted me to polyphony and the Flemish-Burgundian school over 40 years ago.

[Mandryka]

If you get in Dufay, the more I listen to it, the more I'm convinced that the one released this year by The Orlando Consort is interesting, because it's so incredibly introverted. No one else does the music in such a rapt way.

That's not quite true, this is another very interior one I think -- and that despite the fact that they want to explore Dufay's connection to the theatre. It is very very good I think

[vers la flamme]

It was the one disc that converted me to polyphony and the Flemish-Burgundian school over 40 years ago.

That's amazing! I randomly found it at a record store. Glad I decided to go for it. Amazing music making, really.

@Mandryka, I'm not familiar enough with this music to know better – what do you mean by introverted, and what makes those recordings that way? Would you call this Munrow recording introverted or extroverted?

[prémont]

@Mandryka, I'm not familiar enough with this music to know better – what do you mean by introverted, and what makes those recordings that way? Would you call this Munrow recording introverted or extroverted?

Monrow'a recordings are rather extrovert. As he was in recitals (I have heard him live twice).

[San Antone]

It is hard for me to listen to Munrow, or any early music recordings prior to 1978 1984 (when Andrew Parrott released his Machaut Messe, OVPP).  The performance style was crude, IMO, by comparison with what arrived with scholarship and recordings of a more recent vintage.

[Mandryka]

That's amazing! I randomly found it at a record store. Glad I decided to go for it. Amazing music making, really.

@Mandryka, I'm not familiar enough with this music to know better – what do you mean by introverted, and what makes those recordings that way? Would you call this Munrow recording introverted or extroverted?

It's partly to do with the way they project the sounds. See what you think of this.

Here's an interesting introverted performance of Vergine Bella from Russel Oberlin, it's as if he's sharing his feelings with an intimate friend, or with himself

https://www.youtube.com/v/Ms68D9Pn18Q

and here's one which seems more extrovert, as if she's demonstrating her feeling to a large audience

https://www.youtube.com/v/YMe7_wyHai4

It's the difference between the singer giving the impression of looking into themselves, like a soliloquy, or looking out to us, like in a speech.

[Que]

Nothing wrong with Guerber.....

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Q

[Mandryka]

Nothing wrong with Guerber.....

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Q

I listened to it last week, I think it's very good.

Part of it with me is to do with tempo. I like the tempos of both Maletto and Guerber in this mass, and there was another, but I forget which, maybe Binchois Consort, which struck the right chord with me.  This is a personal thing of course, and I can imagine that many people want a more thrilling approach (Cut Circle is an example)

The more I listen to Dufay, the more I like Maletto/Cantica Symphonia. I like the way they project, I like the way they use instruments, I like the way they use male and female voices, I like the tempos.

[Mandryka]

It is hard for me to listen to Munrow, or any early music recordings prior to 1978 1984 (when Andrew Parrott released his Machaut Messe, OVPP).  The performance style was crude, IMO, by comparison with what arrived with scholarship and recordings of a more recent vintage.

I don't know as much about scholarship as you, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn my taste is on the crude side compared with yours, but there are many Dufay recordings which I really love which I think predate that, I may have got the dates wrong though.

The Davies Brothers songs
Pomerium Missa Ecce Ancilla Domini
Syntagma Musicum
Studio Der Fruhen Musick
Pro Cantione Antiqua.

[vers la flamme]

Frankly, I'm not interested in the scholarship. If Munrow's recording is crude, then so am I. 

@Mandryka, between the two I much preferred the Russel Oberlin, I may be starting to see what you mean by introvert/extrovert. I wonder if the context of the performance has to do with this distinction. I imagine it's much harder to deliver an "introverted" performance in a live setting.

[prémont]

link=topic=22169.msg1236543#msg1236543 date=1570223363
It's the difference between the singer giving the impression of looking into themselves, like a soliloquy, or looking out to us, like in a speech.

Petrarch's poem is not kind of introspection but is directly addressed to the beautiful virgin, so the extrovert approach may seem to be the most likely.

[Mandryka]

Petrarch's poem is not kind of introspection but is directly addressed to the beautiful virgin, so the extrovert approach may seem to be the most likely.

Virgin Mary I think, he's not trying to get her to sleep with him, he's engaged in intimate prayer.