Favourites,
Gifts for... Baroque and Early Music fans
With highlights from this year's early music releases (including recordings from The Tallis Scholars, Sean Shibe, and the Gabrieli Consort), excellent box sets and collections, and some new books, we've selected some perfect presents for lovers of Renaissance and baroque music.
Outstanding 2020 Releases
Josquin: Masses Hercules Dux Ferrarie, D'ung aultre amer & Missa Faysant regretz
The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips
This is the ninth and final instalment of The Tallis Scholars’s series of the complete Josquin masses, which reaches the finishing-line just in time for the composer’s 500th anniversary next year; the three masses here were written in the composer’s early middle age, and are described by Phillips as ‘a perfect showcase for a genius who felt challenged to make each setting different’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Featuring Bach's Lute Suites Nos. 1 & 2 and Prelude, Fugue & Allegro for Lute in E flat major BWV998, the young Scottish guitarist's third recording for Delphian was described by The Times as 'masterful, beautiful and convincing in every way' and praised in Gramophone for the 'energy, reflection, eclecticism, integration and emotional candour' of his musicianship.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following their Gramophone Award-winning debut recording of music by Manuel Cardoso (also lauded in Choir & Organ for its ‘tenderness, solemnity, and profound feeling for the text’), the Portuguese vocal consort turn their attention to another of their compatriots, Duarte Lobo (c.1565-1646), with three of the works here receiving their world premiere recordings.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
In Chains of Gold: The English Pre-Restoration Verse Anthem Vol. 2
Magdalena Consort, Fretwork, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, with Silas Wollston (organ)
Three years on from their majestic recording of Orlando Gibbons's complete consort anthems, The Magdalena Consort and their instrumental collaborators showcase the other side of the coin: the instrumental religious music-making that seems to have been common in domestic settings during the Tudor period; the results are strikingly expressive and in places charmingly intimate.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Barricades
Jean Rondeau (harpsichord), Thomas Dunford (lute), Lea Desandre (mezzo), Marc Mauillon (baritone), Myriam Rignol (viola da gamba)
Barricades takes us on a tour of the Versailles court of Louis XIV and XV, taking in music by François Couperin, Robert De Visée, Michel Lambert, Marin Marais, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Jean-Henry D’Anglebert, Antoine Forqueray and Jean-Philippe Rameau: reviewing the results back in August, Gramophone observed that 'Dunford and Rondeau are already steeped in this rich and subtle repertoire, and play it like they own it'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Purcell: The Fairy Queen, 1692
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Anna Dennis (soprano), Mhairi Lawson (soprano), Ashley Riches (bass-baritone), Roderick Williams (baritone); Gabrieli, Paul McCreesh
A year on from their joyous King Arthur (which was crowned Recording of the Year at the 2020 BBC Music Magazine Awards), the Gabrielis present Purcell’s incidental music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in a new edition by McCreesh and Christopher Suckling. Highlights include a magnificently over-the-top Ashley Riches as a drunken poet and Carolyn Sampson's sublime stillness in 'See, even Night Herself is here'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Charpentier: Orphée aux enfers
Reinoud Van Mechelen (tenor), Vox Luminis, A Nocte Temporis, Lionel Meunier
The two Belgian early music ensembles pool their distinguished resources for two very different works depicting Orpheus's descent to the underworld, with Van Mechelen on outstanding form as the intrepid hero in each case: so beguiling and emotionally engaging is his singing that it’s entirely understandable that the denizens of the underworld are heartbroken at his departure!
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Growing out of socially-distanced musical get-togethers in lockdown, this all-BACH programme is the brainchild of Austrian soprano Prohaska, who is joined by three other singers for a sequence of cantata-movements exploring the ideas of contemplation, waiting, and recovery – including Schafe können sicher weiden, Wie zittern und wanken, and excerpts from Ich habe genug.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
After the carnivalesque delights of his all-Cavalli album last year, the French countertenor turns to the rather more sombre world of Italian baroque oratorio, in a programme which takes its title from a work by Pietro Torri and also includes arias by Alessandro Scarlatti, Fortunato Chelleri, Johann Adolph Hasse, Nicola Fago, Antonio Caldara, Antonio Maria Bononcini, Benedetto Marcello, and Handel. Five arias are world premiere recordings.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Following their musical explorations of Dresden, Paris and London, Pramsohler and his musicians turn their attention to eighteenth-century Berlin in a programme of trio sonatas by Benda, Graun, Janitsch, Kirnberger and Schulz, plus a fugue by Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
New Box Sets and Collections
The venerable Dutch choir mark their half-century with this anthology of some of their finest recordings, which includes Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody (with Ann Hallenberg) and Schicksalslied, Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Dvořák’s Requiem, and the disc of Bach Leipzig Cantatas Ich elender Mensch, which was awarded five stars in BBC Music Magazine when it first appeared in 2014.
Available Format: 6 CDs
Recorded between 2001 and 2019, Longhini’s Monteverdi series with his Verona-based ensemble has been described as ‘compelling, simultaneously controlled and imaginative’ (American Record Guide), ‘brilliantly stylish’ (BBC Music Magazine) and reaching ‘rare heights of early Baroque eloquence’ (The Observer). The performances (which include numerous premiere recordings) use authentic uncut editions and employ male voices only.
Available Format: 15 CDs
Recent Books on Early, Medieval, and Baroque Music
This new biography traces Tallis's long career from his youthful appointment at Dover Priory to his years as a senior member of the Chapel Royal, revisiting the most important documents of his life and a wide variety of his musical works. It also takes readers on a guided journey along the River Thames to the palaces, castles, and houses where Tallis made music for the four monarchs he served. It ends with reflections on Tallis's will, his epitaph, and other post-mortem remembrances that give us a glimpse of his significant place in the sixteenth-century musical world.
Available Format: Book
Bach has remained a figure of continuous fascination and interest since the original Master Musicians volume's publication in 1983. Reflecting new biographical information that has only emerged in recent decades, this new edition contributes to an ongoing scholarly conversation about Bach with clarity and concision. Dispensing with biographical minutiae and more closely examining the interplay between his life and his music, it presents a grounded and refreshing new framing of a masterful composer.
Available Format: Book
The Miserere attributed to the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) is one of the most popular choral pieces of late Renaissance/early Baroque music. Yet the Miserere known today bears little resemblance to Allegri's original or to its method of performance before 1900. This book is the first detailed account of this iconic work's performance history in the Sistine Chapel, in particular focusing on its heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Available Format: Book
Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass
Yo Tomita, Robin Leaver, & Jan Smaczny (editors); Cambridge University Press; Paperback
Composed over the course of Johann Sebastian Bach's life, the Mass in B minor is considered by many to be his greatest and most complex work. The fourteen essays assembled in this volume originate from the International Symposium Understanding Bach's B Minor Mass, at which scholars from eighteen countries gathered to debate the latest topics in the field.
Available Format: Book
Renaissance Polyphony (Cambridge Introductions to Music)
Fabrice Fitch; Cambridge University Press; Paperback
This engaging study introduces Renaissance polyphony to a modern audience, helping readers of all ages and levels of experience make sense of what they are hearing. Through a combination of detailed, nuanced appreciation of musical style and a lucid overview of current debates, it offers a glimpse of meanings behind and beyond the notes.
Available Format: Book
Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages - Essays in Honour of Christopher Page
Tess Knighton & David Skinner (editors); Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
Christopher Page is one of the most influential and distinguished scholars and performers of medieval music. The essays presented here in his honour reflect the broad range of subjects that have characterised Page's contribution to our knowledge of music of the Middle Ages, from the earliest polyphony to the conductus and motet of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the troubadour and trouvere repertories.
Available Format: Book
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism
Stephen Meyer & Kirsten Yri (editors); Oxford University Press; Hardback
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism brings together international scholars from a wide range of disciplines to provide a snapshot of the diverse ways in which medievalism - the retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages - powerfully transforms many of the varied musical traditions of the last two centuries.
Available Format: Book
The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music
Anna Maria Busse Berger & Jesse Rodin (editors); Cambridge University Press; Paperback
This collection of essays offers overviews of composers, genres, and musical institutions as well as new and provocative reassessments of the work concept, the boundaries between improvisation and composition, the practice of listening, humanism, musical borrowing, and other topics. Multidisciplinary studies of music and architecture, feasting, poetry, politics, liturgy, and religious devotion rub shoulders with studies of compositional techniques, musical notation, music manuscripts, and reception history.
Available Format: Book
Polyphony in Medieval Paris: The Art of Composing with Plainchant
Catherine A. Bradley; Cambridge University Press; Paperback
Polyphony associated with Notre Dame marks a turning point in medieval music. This book presents new methodologies to illuminate processes of musical and poetic creation, from monophonic plainchant and vernacular songs, to polyphonic organa and motets in both Latin and French.
Available Format: Book
Revisiting the Codex Buranus - Contents, Contexts, Composition
Tristan E. Franklinos & Henry Hope (editors); Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
The Codex Buranus, compiled in the first half of the thirteenth century, has fascinated modern scholars ever since its rediscovery in 1803. Its diverse range of texts (some famously featuring in Orff's Carmina Burana) and music gives testimony to the vibrant milieu in which it was compiled. These essays enable the less well-known aspects of the Codex to receive greater scrutiny, and bring new perspectives on the more familiar parts of the manuscript.
Available Format: Book
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