Several recordings have recently explored the largely neglected work of English composer Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). But it is fitting that With a Merrie Noyse has been the one to receive a Grammy award nomination, for Best Small Ensemble Performance, in 2004. This U.S. industry award tends to be bestowed on good collaborations, and With a Merrie ...
Times change even in conservative quarters, and so it is even in that bastion of English tradition, the King's College chapel in Cambridge, England. The all-male (men and boys) Choir of King's College, Cambridge, has been singing these English-language Anglican anthems for nearly 400 years, and the current director, British veteran Stephen ...
One may not be too old to recall a time when, upon the discovery of the very existence of Orlando Gibbons' remarkable montage of period street cries, The Cries of London, one dashed to the University Library in haste to find a recording. This was usually followed by a sinking realization: while Gibbons' achievement was in itself astonishing, the ...
A fairly random collection of the sacred music of three English composers from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, each disc of this Harmonia Mundi three-disc set nevertheless has its attractive qualities. In the disc given to two masses and three motets by the celebrated William Byrd, the all-male Chanticleer sings with an austere ...
One may not be too old to recall a time when, upon the discovery of the very existence of Orlando Gibbons' remarkable montage of period street cries, The Cries of London, one dashed to the University Library in haste to find a recording. This was usually followed by a sinking realization -- while Gibbons' achievement was in itself astonishing, the ...
For various reasons, the consort songs -- for voice and viol consort -- of William Byrd have never been terribly well known. They don't have the compelling accompanying narrative of Byrd's religious music, rife with the sociopolitical intrigue of Elizabethan England. Nor do they offer accessible fun for all like the madrigals of the following ...
In his own time, which was that of the High Renaissance style (he died in 1506), Alexander Agricola was renowned across Europe. The popularity of his song Si dedero is attested to by the composition of parodies, two of which are included on this introduction to the composer's secular music. The Agricola song itself, inexplicably, is not included, ...
Lockerbie Memorial Concert is the third release on composer Gavin Bryars' boutique label GB Records, and is taken from a concert given December 21, 1998, at Westminster Cathedral as an observance of the 10th anniversary of the explosion of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Likely an act of terrorism, this event claimed 270 lives, one of ...
Quite a few early music releases in the years since 2000 have set themselves the task of exploring music that has rarely been recorded until now. All of these are welcome, but not all of them make a bid to rewrite the history books. Ludwig Senfl: Im Maien is one that does. Senfl (1486-1542), a student of Heinrich Isaac and a composer in the ...
Upon its original release in 2001, Fretwork's Ottaviano Dei Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odehecaton was widely acclaimed as an instant classic, and it was the first recording in 35 years to address its very important topic, the first volume of polyphonic music ever printed. Ottaviano Dei Petrucci was the inventor of a new and stylish kind of music ...
This is not the first recording of Italian composer Salomone Rossi's 1622 settings of Jewish liturgy, and buyers seeing the subtitle "Jewish Music for Viols" may assume that the album includes further discoveries in the same vein. It's actually oversold, but this release from the innovative British ensemble Fretwork should be useful for anyone ...
This two-disc EMI set presents early and mature works by Estonian post-modernist Arvo Pärt. The early works are represented by the Nekrolog from 1960 and the I Sümfoonia (Symphony No. 1) from 1963 performed by Paavo Järvi and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. These are standard-issue hyper-expressive serial works in the post-Second ...
Harmonia Mundi's two-disc set called The Essential Bach does indeed provide a clear view of the essential Bach in a compact package even if it cannot hope to represent the fullness of the composer's output. Starting with a suitably sparkling performance of the opening movement of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin ...
For music in the key of doleful, try this Amon Ra disc called In Nomine by the English ensemble Fretwork. Featuring entirely sixteenth century English music for viols and lute, this disc concentrates nearly entirely on the dark, the dreary, and the dismal. Naturally, this predilection does not preclude musical excellence. Whether written by the ...
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