Hosanna in Excelsis - Texts and music from the spiritual world of the Middle Ages

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Description of Hosanna in Excelsis - Texts and music from the spiritual world of the Middle Ages

A concert recording from the minster at abbey Maulbronn, produced by Josef-Stefan Kindler & Andreas Otto Grimminger

Texts and music from the spiritual world of the European Middle Ages form the subject matter of this programme, which the Les Menestrels Ensemble has put together specially for this performance held in the monastery church at Maulbronn. One is astonished by the abundant variety of language and subject matter on offer here. Yet perhaps even more astonishing is the widespread, cross-border dissemination of a body of religious and cultural thought that flourished outside church walls. In today's monotonous popular culture, shaped as it is by the dogma that what sells is what matters, cultural and human values no longer enjoy pride of place. Linguistic standardisation is pursued aggressively, and dialects, expressions and cultural resonances travel beyond regional borders in only the rarest of cases. In the song as cultivated in the Middle Ages, however, we find a linguistically multifaceted culture; one that is, in this sense, truly more European. Modern media have wrought little improvement. On the contrary, inquisitorial surveillance has found its match in the uniformity-enforcing filter of a profit-oriented business management "culture." The Church may well have imposed strict guidelines, as Klaus Walter describes in the notes below, but at least the themes that were the focus of artistic creation were those by which human beings are moved, and wit and subtlety challenged the human intellect. (Josef-Stefan Kindlerm Publisher)

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