An Idiot Listens to Western Music: Coll (2021)

[RoundTheBend]

Chants for St. Ursula by Hildegard von Bingen:
https://open.spotify.com/album/1g0Bx04ICVq8Hv18ZBr5cI


From Gramophone:

Author:
mberry

Hildegard von Bingen 11,000 Virgins-Chants for the Feast of St Ursula
O dulcissime amator
Spiritui sancto
Favus distillans
O ecclesia oculi tui
Cum vox sanguinis
O rubor sanguinis
Studium divinitatis
Gregorian Chant for Feast Days


After Organum, after Sequentia (both 9/97), here are Anonymous 4, offering their contribution to the growing number of recordings of Hildegard’s St Ursula music. St Ursula, by the way, seems to have held a particular fascination for Hildegard, particularly since her own fame and fervour were attracting to her monastery more and more female recruits (not 11,000, of course, and not even Ursula could have sustained such a claim, though that was the number believed to be correct by the Middle Ages, through a misreading of XI MV – “11 Virgin Martyrs”).
Organum gave us a realistic nunnish sound of female chest voices singing rather drearily – as must often have been the case. Sequentia’s performance was rapturous; they really caught something of the spirit of Hildegard. And now, Anonymous 4’s pure perfection, such perfection as never, never could have been, if truth were to be told. A perfect blend: you really can’t tell whether one, two, three or four are singing. That’s perhaps precisely why the Invitatory sounds just a trifle dull: it needs more contrast between solo and choir to spring into life. There’s such a continuity of bland perfection with an impeccable acoustic, that even the singers themselves must have come to realize that something was lacking. Inevitably, they chose to solve the problem – by adding drones and two-part polyphony to the psalmody and the final “Deo gratias”. The booklet is a work of art in itself, beautifully produced with informative notes and fresh translations.'

[RoundTheBend]

JACQUES ARCADELT
MOTETTI - MADRIGALI - CHANSONS

https://open.spotify.com/album/4zpzzi0Q...CvO5ojThNQ

AllMusic Review:
For this 2018 release from Ricercar, the Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Cappella Mediterranea, and Doulce Mémoire present a three-CD box set of the vocal and choral works of Franco-Flemish composer Jacques Arcadelt. One of the most admired and influential composers of the Renaissance, Arcadelt wrote over 200 secular madrigals, more than 125 chansons in the French and Italian styles, and 24 sacred motets that contributed to the development of 16th century counterpoint that has long been regarded as an ideal. Yet Arcadelt is somewhat overshadowed by more celebrated figures of the Renaissance, situated between Josquin des Prez on the one hand and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina on the other, and as a result, his surprisingly original works are unknown to most listeners. Approaching Arcadelt from this position may be a little baffling, because his most popular "hit," the Ave Maria, which was based on his madrigal Nous voyons que les hommes, is represented here by the 1842 arrangement for a cappella choir by Pierre-Louis Dietsch and the 1865 organ arrangement by Franz Liszt. Apart from this attribution, Arcadelt's music is fascinating to explore in this package, which offers a satisfying program of his works in three broad categories and reduces the potential for confusion. Highly recommended.

Outhere Music review:
Although named in every history of music as an important composer and as one of the creators of the Italian madrigal, principally known for the madrigal Il bianco e dolce cigno and even more so by an incorrectly attributed Ave Maria that amateur choirs have been performing since the Romantic period, Jacques Arcadelt has not yet gained the position that he deserves in the musical world of today. He was in the service of the Medici, the papacy and the kings of France; he could hardly have had a more impressive career. The recording sessions for this set created a real emotional shock on several occasions: we were convinced that Jacques Arcadelt was a true genius and it was easy to understand why his contemporaries regarded him as truly exceptional.

[RoundTheBend]

Tallis: Spem In Alium; The Lamentations... Cambridge

Era: Renaissance
Year: 1570
Form: Motet
Score: 82
Thoughts: Spem in Alium is mind blowing. Worth a listen for anyone who cares for music. It makes shoe gaze layering look like a walk in the park. The Lamentations of Jeremiah were also quite beautiful and gave me awe at the human voice and amazing orchestration. The rest was ho-didly.

Info:

From Wikipedia:
Spem in alium (Latin for "Hope in any other") is a 40-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each, considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. Along with Tallis's Lamentations, H. B. Collins described it in 1929 as Tallis's "crowning achievement".

From medieval.org:
Together with William Byrd, Tallis was the first composer to begin publishing music in England (1575). The majority of his choral music is set in a relatively simple syllabic style, making frequent use of imitation. However, Tallis also wrote several unusual pieces in different forms.

[RoundTheBend]

So I did this. Still filling out the last 15 albums. Some of you had mentioned a long time ago that when I get to this time period and classical you'd love to share what you like.

Baroque: 1600-1750 by sethmadsen

I think I could have a couple more albums from these gents, but afraid I'm missing something obvious (Scheuklappen)
Domenico Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Henry Purcell
Georg Philipp Telemann
Jean-Baptiste Lully?
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Arcangelo Corelli
Tomaso Albinoni
François Couperin
Giuseppe Tartini
Heinrich Schütz
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi


Also I think I got quite a bit from women in the Mideival era naturally... but it seems I have to search for them from the Baroque era... https://bachtrack.com/baroque-month-top...march-2017

[RoundTheBend]

Been busy adding albums to the database/wrapping up the Classical list and now starting the Romantic list. It's hard to listen to anything during this time as I'm testing out available recordings and seeing if I like it... sometimes I settle, but most times I'm happy with what I find... especially if a legit orchestra/recording artist is behind it.

Classical: 1750-1820 by sethmadsen

Romantic: 1820-1910 by sethmadsen

[Tha1ChiefRocka]

I can give you much more input from now on.

Here's one I quite like.


Link

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[RoundTheBend]

Bertrand: Amours De Ronsard by Ensemble...t Janequin

Era: Renaissance
Year: 1570
Form:
Score: 80
Thoughts: The recording distorted a bit from time to time, but the performance was fantastic, especially the bass singer. It'd been a bit since I've listened to all vocal music. I'm still impressed with their performances - from tone, pronunciation and hitting the notes clearly, etc., it's like a crisp/fresh apple or lettuce or something. Fantastic palate cleanser. The music itself however was less interesting. I mean not like bad - just nothing really intriguing. The lute piece was fine. I'd love to put it on and watch a fire or something. I'd love to listen to it in a cathedral or something. Otherwise, nothing special.

Also see link below for text of one of the songs for a surprise.

Info from medieval.org:
This disc presents excerpts of the first book of the "Amours" of Pierre de Ronsard, subtitled "Amours de Cassandre," set to music by Anthoine de Bertrand (1540?-1581?).

Ronsard is the central poet of the French Renaissance. His main characteristics are to have a very rich language and to use a lot of images to illustrate his ideas. His works were used by a great variety of composers.
The realization made by de Bertrand is one of the most achieved, in the art of underlying the text and its ideas with music. One perfect example is the last track of this disc, beginning slowly and softly (word "doux" - soft), and ending with waves of sounds and rhythms (words "Montagnes and plaines" - mountains and plains).
Always the music respects the scansion of the text, thanks to a great variety of rhythms and tempi.

Info from Lieder.net: (Emily Ezust from this site said I could link to text from this site if copyrighted):
http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=90065

Link to read more: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Amours_(Ronsard)

Info from Gramophone:
It is good that the Clement Janequin Ensemble has turned to what can only be called the Ronsard generation in French song. There is surprisingly little of that repertory on record; and anybody who loves French love poetry at its finest is likely to be interested in the enormous quantity of Ronsard settings produced within the 30 years after 1552 when he published the first book of his Amours.
Whether Antoine de Bertrand is the best place to begin is a tricky question, however. His two collections of Ronsard settings were published in 1576 and 1578, thus hardly among the vanguard of that trend. He has a place in the history boks, largely because of the curious (and confused) theories about Greek modality that are built into some of his chansons. And there is some room for wondering whether his somewhat myopic word-painting shows either the most subtle understanding of Ronsard's poetry or the most sovereign control of musical design. But he does have a striking musical character, and it is always good to be given enough music by a single composer to make it possible to gather some impression of his musical language and range of ideas.
Moreover the musicians unquestionably give a fair and sympathetic account of his works. The Clement Janequin Ensemble is at present unsurpassed in its recordings of the French chanson repertory; this record shows many of their qualities. As on other issues, they occasionally cause themselves difficulties of balance and intonation, partly by pitching works too low for the voices they have. And sometimes here they perhaps work a little too hard in their efforts to bring the music to life. But they are on the whole controlled and splendidly idiomatic in their singing; and, as ever, the main weight goes on the alto Dominique Visse whose singing is as fine as ever.
For some reason the record is padded out with four pieces of lute music from at least 20 years earlier than Bertrand's settings. These works by Guillaume Morlaye—who was almost certainly dead by 1560 and whose copious output was all published in the years 1552-8—show no great compositional they provide a good medium for the stylistically aware playing of Claude Deboves.
The sleeve insert gives the poems without translations, but there is a translation of the descriptive note—a severe case of hysteron proteron, if only because anybody equipped to understand Ronsard's poetry would have little trouble with M. Ouvrad's modern French.'

[Tha1ChiefRocka]

For obscure romantic/modern composers and pieces I suggest going to these two youtube channels. Wellesz Company and Unsung Masterworks*. They have so much stuff it's impossible to sift through, but most of the things I've listened to have been worth it.

I'll post two videos that go to those channels.

* Looks like that channel got deleted! A real pity. However, I'll just post another good romantic thing.


Link



Link

[RoundTheBend]

Marenzio: Madrigali A Cinque Voci by Ba...Alex Wolff

Era: Renaissance
Year: 1580-1589
Form: Madrigals
Score: 80
Thoughts: I have tired in this project for vocal music. I nearly never was a vocal only fan. Having said that, this was quite the collection of compositions and I can now see why some will re-arrange these compositions for lute or harpsichord or something because they are impressive arrangements, etc. And mad respect to the performers - serious skills.

Info from medieval.org:
Of all the composers who developed the madrigal form away from its earlier contrapuntal roots toward the Baroque style of Monteverdi & contemporaries, Luca Marenzio (1533-99) is slowly emerging as the most accomplished from our modern perspective. Although Marenzio represents a somewhat short-lived intermediate form in the Mannerist progression from the mature style of Cipriano de Rore (c.1515-1565) to the early style of Monteverdi, he did achieve a personal style which stands well on its own.

Info from AllMusic: (both for another release but it's the same music).
Italian Renaissance composer Luca Marenzio was internationally recognized as the leading composer of madrigals at the height of his career, in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. He was so popular (and the sales of his music so lucrative) that within years of his death, both Flemish and German publishers had issued volumes of his complete five and six part madrigals, an honor almost unheard of at the time. Marenzio's madrigals, while anticipating the songlike lyricism of monody that would come to dominate vocal music of the early Baroque, made full use of the textural and expressive qualities of Renaissance polyphony. His music was not quite as adventurous as Gesualdo's, but it still pushed at the harmonic conventions of the time in order to draw out the emotion of the texts with the maximum expressivity. Palestrina, the paragon of polyphonic correctness, is known to have despised Marenzio for placing expressive content above the rules of proper counterpoint.


In this collection taken from Marenzio's single book of madrigals for four voices (five and six voices being the norm), Rinaldo Alessandrini has selected 21 works, using texts by a variety of poets, that are remarkable for the emotional depth and inventiveness of the text setting, the sure handling of harmonies that are sometimes vertiginously chromatic, and their expressive range. Alessandrini leads four singers and a small instrumental ensemble of Concerto Italiano in impassioned performances. The singers have distinctive, lovely voices, and each sings with warmth and transparent expressiveness, but at the same time, their blend is gorgeously rich and smooth, an ideal combination for these madrigals. Opus 111's sound is immaculate and wonderfully present. The CD should be of strong interest to fans of Renaissance vocal music and superlative ensemble singing.