Early Music Round-up,
Early Music Round-Up - Summer 2023
Violinist Chouchane Siranossian and vocal ensemble Cappella Pratensis explore some of the most ambitious works from their respective domains – pieces of boundary-pushing scope, complexity and technical ferocity – while viol player François Joubert-Caillet and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani both strike a more relaxed tone.
Matthew Martin of Gonville & Caius College Cambridge bolsters his singers with the instrumentalists of In Echo to create a luxurious choral-instrumental sound that shows the motets of Dering and Philips in full Technicolor, and Adrian Chandler's La Serenissima follow in the footsteps of Nicola Matteis the Younger as he took Italian and English styles with him to Imperial Vienna.
Recordings
By now, the Orlando Consort's ongoing Machaut project should need no introduction; their clarity and sensitivity to the music and text are perfectly suited to the idiom. This instalment sees the Consort focus on Machaut's works devoted to the Virgin Mary (contrasted favourably with earthly ladies by a spurned lover...), as well as songs responding to the devastation of the Hundred Years' War.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Inspired by a fifteenth-century treatise on dancing, Into the Winds explore some of the earliest dances of which we have a definite notated record. Ranging from Burgundian basse-danses to Italian saltarelli, and interspersed with more pensive numbers – refined court fashions, no-frills rustic merrymaking and everything in between!
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Clocking in at around an hour (and with three of its individual movements approaching fifteen minutes), the Missa Maria Zart is the longest extant Renaissance Mass – and a work that is audacious not just in sheer size but in complexity, with Obrecht at the height of his powers and drawing on some of the most intricate compositional techniques of his time.
Available Format: SACD
The stile nuovo music of Philips and Dering pushes at the boundaries of the Renaissance and anticipates the Baroque. Reading this on paper is one thing, but never has it leapt so vividly off the page and been so thrillingly audible as in these new recordings, where early brass and string instruments join forces with the singers. The War in Heaven word-painting of Factum est silentium, with St Michael and his angels squaring off against the Devil and his followers, has never sounded so cinematic.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Not just a duel but a four-way playoff: Chouchane Siranossian dips into the heady days of the violin's first explosive rush of popularity, with competing violinist-composers jostling to outdo one another in early eighteenth-century Venice. Siranossian herself was dubbed 'diabolical[ly]' virtuosic by the Sunday Times, so it's no surprise that Tartini of Devil's Trill fame is present, setting out his stall with a concerto alongside one each from Veracini, Locatelli and Vivaldi.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Contrasting starkly with all that frenzied jousting from Venice is what I might call Marais's "retirement" book – his fifth book of viol pieces, dating from 1725, by which point he had swapped playing for a leisurely lifestyle of gardening. François Joubert-Caillet and L'Achéron explore the music of this calm, elegant collection from a composer whose reputation – far from needing to be reinforced by fiery showmanship - was by this point well established.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Born in London to an Italian expatriate violinist-composer, Nicola Matteis the Younger was moulded by the artistic golden age of the Restoration. When he later headed to Continental Europe, ending up in the service of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in Vienna, he took with him the music he had known in England – not just natives like Purcell, but the Corellian style that was in vogue in Matteis's London – of which we hear a sampling here. A pair of works by Matteis himself complete the collection.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bach: Notebooks for Anna Magdalena
Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord/clavichord), Carolyn Sampson (soprano)
Perhaps not what one might expect of a harpsichordist as accomplished and fiercely ambitious as Mahan Esfahani, the Anna Magdalena Notebooks were compiled by Bach for his second wife, intended in part to act as aids to her musical progression as well as forming the basis for relaxed domestic musicmaking in the Bach household. Esfahani reflects this intimate setting in his use of the clavichord for much of the solo keyboard repertoire; Carolyn Sampson steps into the role of Anna Magdalena herself for the vocal items.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Walther von der Vogelweide
Joel Frederiksen (bass, citole), Anne Azéma (soprano), Vincent Kibildis (harp, vocals), Félix Verry (fiddle, vocals)
Don't be put off by academic-sounding references to "adiastematic neumes" in the booklet; this album of reconstructions of works by von der Vogelweide (c.1170 – c.1230) has a folksy directness and sincerity about it that belies the enormous depths of research on which it is based. Joel Frederiksen's rich bass voice is a particular delight, lending gravitas as well as declamatory impact to a style that might otherwise sound sparse and minimal.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Books
What characterises medieval polyphony and song? Who composed this music, sang it, and wrote it down? Where and when did the different genres originate, and under what circumstances were they created and performed? This book gives a comprehensive introduction to the rich variety of polyphonic practices and song traditions during the Middle Ages. Each chapter focuses on a particular geographical location, setting out the specific local contexts of the music created there. Guiding the reader through the musical techniques of melody, harmony, rhythm, and notation that distinguish the different genres of polyphony and song, the authors also consider the factors that make modern performances of this music sound so different from one another.
Available Format: Book
Many scholars and music lovers hold that J.S. Bach is a modern figure, as his music seems to speak directly to the aesthetic, spiritual, or emotional concerns of today's listeners. But, by eighteenth-century standards, Bach and his music in fact reflected and forcefully promoted a premodern world and life view. Michael Marissen offers a new look at Bach that considers problems of inattentiveness to historical considerations in academic and popular writing about Bach's relation to the present. Throughout, the book provides overlooked or misunderstood evidence of Bach's private engagement with religious and social issues that he also addressed in his public vocal compositions. Marissen ultimately argues that, while we are free to make use of Bach and his music in whatever ways we find fitting, we ought also to guard against miscasting Bach in our own ideological image and proclaiming the authenticity of that image, and hence its prestige value, in support of our own agendas.
Available Format: Book
David Smith - Head of Digital
