The A-La-Mi-Re Manuscripts - Flemish Polyphonic Treasures
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Composer: Pierre AlamireComposer: Gregorian Chant
Composer: Antoine de Fevin
Composer: Matthias Gascogne
Composer: Nicolas Gombert
Composer: Heinrich Isaac
Composer: Josquin Desprez
Composer: Pierre Moulu
Composer: Pierre de la Rue
Composer: Hans Neusidler
Composer: Marbrianus de Orto
Composer: Cornelis Rigo
Composer: Pierre de la Rue
Composer: Adrian Willaert
Performer: Caccia
Performer: Capilla Flamenca
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2000-01-25
Music Label: Naxos
Music reviews of The A-La-Mi-Re Manuscripts - Flemish Polyphonic Treasures
Music Review: Flemish Fire!
Rating: 5 Stars
Early Music programs are a lot like fine wines; single vintage bottlings are the fashion, but sometimes blends are easier on the palette. Likewise, most high-end recordings of Renaissance and Baroque tend to be "complete" works by a single composer. That works well enough for Baroque oratorios, but Renaissance music comes in smaller packages - motets, villancicos, carmina, usually no more tha four to six minutes long. I know from hard experience that a concert program of 15 similar motets, however finely performed, will be hard to sell.
Capilla Flamenca has taken another option, a blended program of vocal works by different composers spiced with instrumental fantasies of the same era. The risk of such a concert program is lack of focus and unity, but Capilla Flamenca has answered that challenge by the neat device of centering their program around Petrus Alamire, one of the great calligrapher and manuscript illuminators of the 16th Century, whose work was avidly collected by Charles V and Margarite of Austria. The name "Alamire" is a musical jest, A for the tonic note, la, mi, and re for the intervals of the scale. The man's real name was Imhofe.
Composers represented on this CD include Josquin Desprez, Pierre de la Rue, Heinrich Isaac, Jean Mouton, Adrian Willaert, and Anon -- all the greats of the Flemish musical mafia which conquered all of Europe in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Instrumental works are performed on "alta capella" shawms and trombones, solo lute, and "bassa capella" viola da gamba consort. In this context, 'alta' means loud, 'bassa' means soft. 'Flamenco' means Flemish, by the way; the Flemish influence on Spanish music of the Renaissance was the starting point for the later Spanish popular music we now call flamenco.
I found this CD on a shelf in my apartment in Rome. I must have bought it five or six years ago, and never got around to listening to it until now. What a stunning surprise! This relatively unknown ensemble of young Belgians can really sing, and sing this repertoire as proudly as if it were their national heritage, which it is. The instrumentalists are all part of an ensemble called La Caccia, also Belgian judging by their names. Their bright tones are as effective as ginger for cleansing the musical palette between sips of oak-barrel aged vocal polyphony.
Description of The A-La-Mi-Re Manuscripts - Flemish Polyphonic Treasures
What were these oddly named manuscripts? Hand-copied collections of music so beautifully calligraphed and illustrated that they were collected as art treasures by wealthy nobility and bankers, exchanged as gifts between heads of state, and even used as diplomatic bribes of a sort. (Charles?V gave several of them to key personages to secure his election as Holy Roman Emperor.) They were produced by the workshop of Petrus Alamire (n? Imhoff), who took his nom de plume from solf?ge syllables (e.g., do re mi), and they're among the most important sources we have today for music from the period around 1500. Naxos has put together a fascinating sampler of music from some of Alamire's manuscripts: sacred music and elegant secular art songs by composers both known (Josquin, de la Rue) and almost forgotten (Marbianus de Orto), as well as a few pieces played on wonderfully raucous shawms and trombones--all performed by the exemplary Belgian ensemble Capilla Flamenca. This disc should be a treat for Renaissance collectors (even those who don't usually care for anthologies); at the super-budget price, it's a good introduction to Renaissance polyphony as well. --Matthew WestphalGeneral CDs
- Styles > Classical
- Chamber Music > General
- Featured Composers, A-Z > ( G ) > Gombert, Nicolas
- Historical Periods > Classical (c.1770-1830) > Forms & Genres > Chamber Music
- Early Music > Sacred & Religious
- Vocal & Song
- General
- Renaissance (c.1450-1600) > Sacred & Religious
- Opera & Vocal > General
- Historical Periods > Renaissance (c.1450-1600)
- Vocal Non-Opera > Chansons
- Chants
- Masses
- Partsongs
- Songs & Lieder > General
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