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J. Ch. Bach - Sacred Songs of Sorrow

J. Ch. Bach - Sacred Songs of Sorrow
ID: SIGCD018
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Sacred Music
Subcollection: Sacred Songs of Sorrow

Sacred songs from Protestant Germany of the late 16th and early 17th century

In Lutheran music the viol became particularly associated with the affect of lamento. This finds its roots in the string accompaniments to Italian operatic laments-a genre which had become much in vogue after Monteverdi’s second opera Arianna.

On this disc of music from Protestant Germany Charivari Agréable is joined by the distinguished tenor, Rodrigo del Pozo.
18.00 eur Buy

Music for Charles V - Holy Roman Emperor

Music for Charles V - Holy Roman Emperor
ID: SIGCD019
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Choral Collection
Subcollection: Choir

Signum Records is delighted to present Chapelle du Roi’s eleventh release with the label. This recording offers a selection of music spanning the life and reign of Charles V, undoubtedly the most powerful man in 16th-century Europe, from his early teenage years to his death in 1558.

Charles was a devout Catholic, and maintained a chapel employing some of the most notable composers of the period, including Nicolas Gombert and Thomas Crecquillon, who Charles referred to as ‘the truest Opheus of the age’. Closely identified with the Order of the Golden Fleece, which gave rise to the L’homme armé tradition, Charles V was said to have a musical ear. A great deal of music survives that is associated directly with him and his patronage - a selection of which is presented on this recording.

The music composed for rulers frequently mixed the heavenly with the secular, and a great many pieces were written to celebrate political conquests and occasions within the court. For example, Cristóbal Morales possibly wrote his Missa L'homme armé as an offering for Charles’s wedding to Isabella of Portugal.

Near the end of Charles’s reign, the young composer Orlandus Lassus was just starting his career, and seeking preferment. He offered his secular motet, Heroum Soboles to Charles in the hope that he would join the prestigious Capilla Flamenca. He was unsuccessful, however Charles’s minister, Bishop Granvelle of Arras helped Lassus to secure his position at the court of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria - a musical establishment that was no less magnificent.

The last years of Charles life were troubled by his failure to convert the Protestants back into the Roman Catholic Church, and to lead a universal Catholic empire. His death resounded throughout the Empire, and Don Fernando de las Infantas marked his passing with a setting of Parce Mihi Domine, the best-known of the texts from Matins pro defunctis.
18.00 eur Buy

The Queen's Goodnight - Charivari Agréable

The Queen's Goodnight - Charivari Agréable
ID: SIGCD020
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Chamber Music
Subcollection: Chamber Ensemble

"Her Majesty lay upon her back, with one hand in the bed and the other without. The bishop kneeled down by her, and examined her first of her faith: and she so punctually answered all his several questions by lifting up her eyes and holding up her hand, as it was a comfort to all beholders. Then the good man told her plainly, what she was and what she was to come to, and though she had been long a great Queen here upon earth, yet shortly she was to yield an account of her stewardship to the King of Kings. Between one and two of the clock on Thursday morning, he brought me word the Queen was dead."

Thus wrote the queen’s cousin Sir Robert Carey, recording in his memoirs the events of March 23rd-24th 1603, and the end of an era in England’s history. Earlier, as Elizabeth I lay dying she called for her musicians to play around her bed so that “she may die gaily as she had lived, and that the horrors of death might be lessened; she heard the music tranquilly until her last breath”.

As the 400th anniversary of her death approaches, The Queen’s Goodnight commemorates the music of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The queen’s professional musical establishment was in some ways more modest than that of her father, Henry VIII, but she brought together the finest talent in the land and created collections of consort, lute and keyboard music that is still renowned today.

charivari agréable demonstrate representative facets of this wonderful 16th century repertory. The pieces are selected with a passionate attention to detail and charivari agréable have included music that depicts the life of the queen: music from the court, an exhilarating depiction of a hunt, celebrations from the queen’s coronation and the moving laments on her death.
18.00 eur Temporarily out of stock

Thomas Tallis: The Complete Works - Volume 6 - Music for a Reformed Church

Thomas Tallis: The Complete Works - Volume 6 - Music for a Reformed Church
ID: SIGCD022
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Renaissance

Chapelle du Roi devote this latest volume to music which was composed by Tallis for use during the reformed services announced in The booke of the common prayer which came into effect on Whitsunday (9th June) 1549. Tallis’s music, together with the associated intonations and Collects (for Easter Day at Mattins and for Christmas Eve), is presented for this recording in the normal liturgical sequence for the day; Mattins, Holy Communion, and Evensong. The recording concludes with Tallis’ nine psalm-tune harmonisations which he contributed to Archbishop Matthew Parker’s Psalter, published in 1567.

Chapelle du Roi give an inspired and historically informed performance of the sacred renaissance repertoire for which they are celebrated.
18.00 eur Buy

Guillaume Dufay: Sacred music from the Bologna Q15 manuscript

Guillaume Dufay: Sacred music from the Bologna Q15 manuscript
ID: SIGCD023
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Sacred Music

This is the third disc recorded by The Clerks' Group for their Signum Records trilogy. The series explores repertoire in the medieval period and culminates with a selection of works by Guillaume Dufay, found in one of the great anthologies of 15th century music: the manuscript Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS Q15 (or "Q15" as it is known by its friends).

The Q15 manuscript contains examples of almost every conceivable musical genre of the period by a vast array of composers. The Clerks' Group has chosen to perform works by a single composer, but still the variety of forms and styles on offer is bewildering. Guillaume Dufay was a composer who witnessed and contributed to most of the revolutionary changes to occur in music composition in the 15th century. The album includes some of the earlier works so often neglected from Dufay's repertoire, and goes on to explore compositions that demonstrate this revolutionary genius. Some compositional techniques celebrated by The Clerks' Group's performance include the playful exchange of Dufay's song-like melodies between the vocal lines; and the use of mensural canon, where the same melody is sung by all voices but at slightly different speeds. These are just a few examples of the radical nature of Dufay's music as demonstrated on this recording.

The Clerks' Group brings immense diversity to the music and its performance. Their refreshing approach displays sincere empathy and passion for this astonishing repertory.
18.00 eur Buy

J. S. Bach: Sonatas for Viola de Gamba & music from The Well Tempered Clavier

J. S. Bach: Sonatas for Viola de Gamba & music from The Well Tempered Clavier
ID: SIGCD024
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Subcollection: Harpsichord

It is not difficult to discern many of the elements that render Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord so remarkable by the standards of their age: a mixing of virtually every conceivable genre, form, style, medium and gesture of the late German Baroque; a forging of connections that had not hitherto been made; a penetrating insight into the multi-dimensional potentialities of each motive, theme and polyphonic complex.

Composing for the viol in this way was by, the early eighteenth century, archaic, yet what has made J.S.Bach a summit for many is his apparent ability to transcend historical contingency, somehow to stop the clock of outward progress and to rearrange and recreate the world as he knew it.

On this disc we hear the three sonatas for the Viola da Gamba and three Preludes and Fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier.
18.00 eur Buy

Master of Musicians: Songs and Instrumental music by Josquin des Pres

Master of Musicians: Songs and Instrumental music by Josquin des Pres
ID: SIGCD025
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Subcollection: Choir

Songs and Instrumental Music by Josquin des Pres, his pupils and contemporaries.
18.00 eur Buy

Music for Gainsborough - by his contemporaries

Music for Gainsborough - by his contemporaries
ID: SIGCD026
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Subcollection: Chamber Ensemble

The paintings of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) constitute one of the most poignant and evocative icons of Georgian England; he painted supremely accomplished portraits of a wide social spectrum, and landscapes which capture the verdancy of England prior to the Stygian advance of the Industrial Revolution.

Gainsborough’s own creativity sought expression in music as much as in painting, which was unusual in an age when musical ability was mainly considered the preserve of the ladies.

For this musical tribute to Gainsborough, we have gathered together pieces by several of his friends; Abel, J.C. Bach, Giardini, Linley & Straube.
18.00 eur Buy

J. S. Bach - The Art of Fugue

J. S. Bach - The Art of Fugue
ID: SIGCD027
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Organ Collection

Colm Carey at the organ of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, London
18.00 eur Buy

Beyond the Score: Organ Improvisations for Whit Sunday

Beyond the Score: Organ Improvisations for Whit Sunday
ID: SIGCD028
CDs: 1
Type: CD
Collection: Organ Collection
Subcollection: Organ

Programme Note

The art of musical improvisation is as old as music itself, and it makes the practice of reading from notated music-which in the West has happened for little more than a millennium-a relative newcomer to the repertoire of options available to the performing musician.

Despite the predominance of printed music, improvisation is all around us if we care to look; the organist playing before or after a church service and accompanying the psalm singing; the singer or instrumentalists ornamenting their lines in the repeated section of a baroque aria; the soloist playing a cadenza in the last movement of a concerto; the jazz band in a night club playing between their prepared numbers; the music students at school or college having an out of hours ‘jam session’.

We can only wonder at the sheer quantity of improvised music that has come and gone and is lost for ever, but equally we must marvel at the sheer inventiveness of human kind and take comfort in the amount of improvised music that is yet to come!

The invention of musical notation, codified by Guido d’Arezzo in the 11th century, was intended as an aide-mémoire to reduce the time it took boys and novice monks to learn the church’s enormous repertoire of plainchant. Notation meant that musical ideas could be worked out and captured for circulation; musical forms could now develop and the art of composition was born. Now, performers could submerse themselves in other musicians’ styles enabling their own musical development to be widened and accelerated.

Similarly, the late nineteenth century invention of audio recording equipment meant that not only could performing musicians now hear a wider variety of performance styles-be it on wax cylinder or digital compact disc-but improvised performances need not always be lost for ever. The availability of recordings of past masters’ organ improvisations, including those of Charles Tournemire, Maurice Duruflé and Pierre Cochereau, has undoubtedly affected today’s younger generation of organist improvisers.

Clues about improvisatory styles from the last millennium are to be found in contemporary notated works. Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517) left a number of mass settings for alternatim choir and organ and similar traditions developed throughout Renaissance Europe, including England, where in some institutions the organ would improvise alternate verses of the office hymns. Many of these ‘improvised’ verses were captured and copied by enthusiasts such as the famous sixteenth century organist Thomas Mulliner.

With the formation of concert societies in the 18th century, improvisation found a new secular audience. Handel entertained the crowds during the interval of his oratorio premieres in the 1730s and 40s by improvising at the organ and this style is clearly seen in the notated organ concerti which he published in response to great demand from his public.

In classical France the organ masses by de Grigny and Couperin are rare instances of a written-down ‘improvised’ tradition. Musical notation apart, further evidence of the nature of the tradition is found in a liturgical document of 1662: the Cérémonial des évęques outlines the soloistic role of the organist in the mass at the following key points: Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Elevation, Communion, and Sortie. These improvisations would have been substantial, while shorter improvisations would alternate with the choir’s singing of the ordinary chant.

Whilst the written-down improvisations of earlier times provide us with a stylised snapshot of the creativity of the time, the ‘stylus phantasticus’ of the 17th and 18th century North Germans was improvisatory by its very nature. Virtually all of J. S. Bach’s preludes and fugues display improvisatory characteristics clearly informed by his elder, Dietrich Buxtehude, whom he admired greatly and travelled long distances to hear. The great G minor fugue BWV 524 is thought to be a written-down improvisation, since the theme was given to applicants for the post of Hamburg Cathedral organist in 1725. On another occasion, Bach apparently improvised for half an hour on An den Wasserflüssen Babylon when unsuccessfully applying for the organist post at St Jacob’s, Hamburg, in 1720. (The successful candidate was required to pay the church authorities a hefty bribe, which Bach was not prepared to do.)

Until the end of the 19th century the organ course at the Paris Conservatoire was centred around improvisation. Widor’s professorship (1890-1937) saw a shift away from this position, but important additions to the 20th century repertoire are nevertheless improvisation based: the five Tournemire improvisations transcribed by Duruflé (1936); Dupré’s Symphonie-Passion (1921); Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecôte (1950); Bovet’s Trois Préludes Hambourgeois (1970-86); Rogg’s Partita sopra Nun freut euch (1976-95); and of course the improvisations of Cochereau transcribed by David Briggs, François Lombard and others. The art continues to flourish on the continent in the hands of such luminaries as Guy Bovet, Peter Planyavsky, Jos van der Kooy and Naji Hakim.

Why is it that the art of improvisation is seen as largely a continental skill with England being a poor relation? Whereas civic pride in Europe might manifest itself in the building of a splendid organ for the town hall or church, England’s musical heritage is vested in a choral tradition. The English choral tradition is, of course, second to none and must go a long way to explaining the English organ’s strong accompaniment qualities. The predominance of ‘repertoire’ training today means that most young English organists unwittingly turn their backs on what is after all the very life-blood of the repertoire. Perhaps the art has been marginalised by its inclusion in exams as a keyboard ‘test’ (along with harmonisation, transposition and score reading which are, of course, important skills). As a result, improvisation has been viewed, at best, as ‘polyfilla’ for a delayed liturgical procession or, at worst, an exam exercise.

However, in recent times the English art of improvisation has undergone a much-needed recovery championed by David Briggs, Wayne Marshall, Nigel Allcoat and others. Disciplined improvisation with form and structure is increasingly seen as an essential part of the organist’s ‘tool kit’. It is now more common for organ recitals to include an improvised item as part of the programme and many of the historic recordings of Cochereau’s improvisations are again available on disc.

The past 1000 years have yielded an incredible legacy of notated music but, as we have become aware of other cultures’ improvised musical traditions, attitudes to notated music have shifted. Take the creative procedures of jazz musicians, rock bands or the aleatory movement of the late 20th century, for example. There will always be a place for written music, but we must not be prisoners to it.

Alexander Mason, Alistair Dixon, August 2000
18.00 eur Buy

 
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