The popularity of the film Tous les matins du monde (All the Mornings of the World) has revived the fortunes of the shadowy composer named Sainte-Colombe, who was active in the late seventeenth century. The film was largely fictitious, but subsequent research, much of it nicely summarized in the notes to this disc, has shed light on who Sainte ...
Having first made her name as a harpsichord player and a singer, Elisabeth Jacquet was a part of the court around Louis XIV from the time she was a child. She was groomed by his mistress and later married a Parisian organist but continued to appear at court and dedicate her compositions to the Sun King, who received them with unstinting praise. ...
Daniel Taylor is a Canadian countertenor, one of a group that has come on the scene in recent years and given promise that soon the countertenor voice will be considered less an exotic specialty and more a generally cultivated voice type. Taylor, perhaps more than other countertenors active today, sounds as though he is engaging in a natural kind ...
This collection of English verse anthems and viol fantasias -- there are no examples of the a cappella, highly polyphonic full anthem -- comes from Montreal's vibrant early music scene and it offers a fresh version of these often-recorded classics of English choral music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The verse anthem, ...
John Jenkins, the historian Roger North noted in 1728, wrote "hors(e)loads" of music, so much "that the private music in England was in a great measure supplied by him." Much of it was for the predominant instrumental ensemble of the time, the viol consort, whose repertory had a distinct melancholy tone. Jenkins reproduces this tone on the surface ...
In his insightful essay in the booklet accompanying the CD, Bruce Haynes makes a compelling argument for the need to understand the difference between descriptive and prescriptive musical notation. Most scores written since the Classical era are prescriptive -- they tell the performer, with varying degrees of precision, just how the music is to be ...
With its Art and Music series, Naxos has come up with a classy looking way of recycling earlier items from its catalog. The discs in the series don't quite deliver what they promise, but this one does better than most. The title Rembrandt: Music of His Time is accurate as far as it goes; the art-historical essay on Rembrandt by Hugh Griffith is ...
Canadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc has done quite a bit of recording in the years leading up to this release with Les Voix Humaines, Ay que sí, particularly with Canadian label Atma Classique. You wouldn't know it by the raves about these albums in Gramophone, because it seems as though that most esteemed of classical publications isn't really paying ...
French music for much of its existence has been centered on Paris and Versailles, just over 10 miles away. Have you ever wondered about the composers who were active in smaller towns? This disc presents unearthed music by Pierre Bouteiller, who apparently worked in Troyes, southeast of Paris, at the end of the glittering seventeenth century. The ...
William Lawes was one of the most prolific composers of chamber music during the Caroline Era, whose life ended not long after the era itself did. A committed Royalist whose music was written for the lavish entertainments of the Royal Court, Lawes died defending his king at the Siege of Chester, which began in September 1645. Toward the end of his ...
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