Guy Janssesns, Laudantes Consort - The Golden Age of European Polyphony
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CD Details
Artist: Guy Janssesns, Laudantes ConsortEdition: Music CD
Format: Box set, Enhanced
CD Release Date: 2002-02-26
Music Label: Cypres
Music reviews of The Golden Age of European Polyphony
Music Review: An anthology of great breadth
Rating: 5 Stars
Before the Austro-German tradition in music, before the Italian musical dynasty - before them all there was the Franco-Flemish school of music. I Fiamminghi, was the name given to the Flemish composers whose international reputations spread right throughout Europe of the Renaissance. Even the contrapunctal imitative style of J.S. Bach could only ever have come into existence thanks to the practices established by I Fiamminghi. So it is good to see the Belgians rediscover their musical heritage that had so resounding an impact on the course of musical history.
Guy Janssens was born in Brussels and studied music at the Louvain conservatory. In 1981 he founded the group that later bore the name Laudantes Consort. Between 1995 and 2000, he devoted himself to this recorded series of 11 CD, which he carried out in collaboration with Jean Salkin, founder of the media library of Belgium.
The Laudantes Consort has a characteristically continental European choral sound, with more use of chest voice used discreetly to give a darker coloring to the sound. In this respect there are similarities to the Huelgas Ensemble except that their sound is much weightier and less refined. They also have a repertoire extending well outside of early music, making them something less than a specialist Early Music choir. In this wide ranging collection, they explore more than just the Franco-Flemish school for they start with the music that lead to its development in the French composers Machaut and the English Dunstable. They then go further to explore the composers whom they influenced including the Italian Palestrina, the English Tallis and Byrd, and the Spaniards Morales and Victoria.
If the greatest strength of this anthology is the sheer breath of the range they cover, it is also its greatest weakness. For example Morales gets a whole volume devoted exclusively to his music while arguably far more important composers such as Heinrich Isaac, and Pierre de la Rue barely get a mention - bar a chanson each, all two minutes worth of music. Nor does either Alexander Agricola or Jacob Obrecht - arguably the greatest of all composers of the Renaissance - get even a note in. Easily the most successful volume on this set is the one devoted to music by Nicolas Gombert with a complete recording of his Missa Beati Omnes along with several excellent motets. All of the Gombert is otherwise available only on this recording, which is possibly the most convincing recording of Gombert's music currently available, mostly because of the Laudantes Coonsrt make the fullest of the highly expressive - almost proto-Baroque - use of crashing dissonances. It really only makes you wish that this approach of recording complete versions of otherwise mostly unavailable music could have been carried over to the other volumes. There is an unfortunate trend to recording some works in extract so that only the Introitus of the Ockeghem Requiem is represented or just the Kyrie of a Lassus mass, just to name two examples. If would have been far preferable to record complete motets by another otherwise unrepresented composer to fill up a disc, as is done by Erik van Nevel in his set of CDs entitled `De Vlaamse Polyfonie'.
For most of us with an interest in Renaissance music acquiring this set will involve significant duplication of repertory. Fortunately, the Laudantes Consort usually has something interesting to say about even the most familiar works recorded here. Tone, intonation and clarity are all very good along with the technically excellent recorded sound throughout.
Unfortunately the CD-ROM (the 12th CD in the set) that comes with the set is for Mac OS8 and so is two generations behind making it unusable for most of us Mac users. The Windows version is for Win 98/95 but I cannot confirm if it is playable on a Win XP platform. Without the CD-ROM the printed booklet alone has scanty information on the music.
All in all I have to congratulate the Laundantes Consort for undertaking these recordings and accordingly award them five stars, despite some reservations. For overall this set remains very good value for the price and there are some genuinely exceptional things here - the Gombert volume is almost worth the price of whole set in fact. De Vlaamese Polyfonie would be my first choice overall, even though their recorded sound is inferior but Erik van Nevel is far more established an authority on Early Music with much experience behind him. This set by the Laudantes Consort is fortunatley far easier to obtain than Eufoda recordings which lack a consistent distributor.
Byrd, William CDs
- Styles > Classical > Featured Composers, A-Z > ( B )
- ( D ) > Dowland, John
- Dufay, Guillaume
- ( G ) > Gibbons, Orlando
- Gombert, Nicolas
- ( L ) > Lassus, Orlando di(Lasso) > All Works by Lassus
- Le Jeune, Claude
- ( M ) > Machaut, Guillaume de > All Works by Machaut
- Monteverdi, Claudio
- Morales, Crist?bal de
- ( T ) > Tallis, Thomas > All Works by Tallis
- Historical Periods > Baroque (c.1600-1750) > General
- Early Music > General
- Vocal & Song
- Renaissance (c.1450-1600) > Sacred & Religious
- Opera & Vocal > General
- Vocal Non-Opera > Anthems
- Chansons
- Songs & Lieder > Lieder
- Madrigals
- General
- Magnificats
- Masses
- Motets
- Partsongs
- Psalms
- Requiems
- Historical Periods > Renaissance (c.1450-1600)
- Sacred & Religious > General
- General
- Dowland, John - Works by Dowland
- Dufay, Guillaume - Works by Dufay
- Monteverdi, Claudio - Works by Monteverdi
- Classical - Featured Composers, A-Z - ( M ) - Morales, Crist?bal de - General
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