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Composer: Anonymous |
| His/her life: 15th century |
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ID: ACDBA091-2 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Baroque Subcollection: Saxophone The year is 1996. Classically trained saxophonist Niels Bijl is at the end of his Conservatorium education. In a record shop in the centre of Enschede: in a spare hour he is trawling the cd racks, looking for unknown music, new inspiration. Ronald Moelker walks past him, purposefully, towards the counter. With a clear question: do you also have recordings of classical music on saxophone? A conversation quickly follows, a friendship is born.
What follows; more than 20 years of research, collaboration and a shared passion for enjoying life. Niels and Ronald, managing to remain unfettered by the apparently different worlds of their chosen instruments, take on all challenges together. The 15th Century British complexity of Baldwine’s A Duo, the light-footedness of Francois Couperin’s Tic-Toc-Choc. Bach as uniting thread, with highlights such as the two-part canon from the Kunst der Fugue and the flute sonata BWV 1035. Aided by the expert mastery of recorder builder Adriana Breukink, the saxophone and recorder come ever closer to each other. The romance of young love is reflected in Tandernaken. The festive cadans of the early middle ages are celebrated in the Estampie Petrone. In an unknown duo, referred to as No. 3, harsh dissonant sounds are continuously replaced with beautiful harmonies, ending in a perfect unison. Ronald Moelker’s composition Ithaca, written for Niels, is the perfect introduction to the heart of the collaboration and friendship: Two fantasies by Telemann. |
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ID: ACDBH047-2 CDs: 1 Type: SACD |
Collection: World Music Early Music
In order to illustrate their borderless talents, Fortuna follows Ciconia and Dufay on this recording on their journey through the Flemish and Italian musical landscape of the late medieval times: Early Music in Context.
Chansons
Just as Dutch painters in the Golden Age were attracted by the Italian light and went to work in Rome, many composers from the Low Countries also made their way over the Alps in search of inspiration. This Italian dream resulted in the creation of brilliant music by two such pioneers, Johannes Ciconia and Guillaume Dufay. Their ability to seemingly effortlessly meld the achievements of Flemish, French, English and Italian music into a new style created a new musical language whose sound crossed over many geographic borders.
Ciconia was educated in Luik, which had a rich musical culture in the late Middle Ages; and he worked in Padua from around 1402 until his death. By that time, he had become a real Italian composer, despite his Northern roots and education: in his elegant ballade Gli atti col dançar, one can hear clearly how Ciconia had mastered the melodic souplesse of the Italian Trecento composers such as Landini. His dramatic Ligiadra donna - with a contratenor line composed by his colleague composer Matteo da Perugia - is written in the typical Northern Italian style of the giustiniana. But nowhere in his work does Ciconia merely follow stylistic trends; on the contrary, his unique and characteristic style inspired a generation of composers who followed him - among them Dufay.
No single 15th Century composer has left such an extensive and varied oeuvre as Guillaume Dufay, who was considered to be the greatest composer of his time, even in his own lifetime. He was educated in Kamerijk (Cambrai). While he was still young, he began travelling extensively for his work, to the Council of Constance for example, and he began working for various Italian patrons. These facts give Dufay's career and work a decidedly "international" allure, but the musical influences of his birthplace are still very recognizable in some of his works. The typically Northern drinking and New Year's songs such as Cheulz qui volent from MS Leiden 2720 or Die mey so lieflic by Thomas Fabri, clearly inspired Dufay to create rondeaux such as Adieu ces bons vins en Ce jour de l'an. While the original songs don't aspire to be much more than a drinking song or a round dance, Dufay manages with his songs to lift the genre to a much higher artistic level, without losing the playfulness and spontaneity of the original forms. His unorthodox application of existing material and traditional compositional techniques make him one of the most inventive composers of the 15th Century - Dufay wrote music that his contemporaries wouldn't have dared to dream of. |
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ID: ACDHA006-2 CDs: 1 Type: SACDH |
Collection: Baroque SACD Hybrid Disc (SACDH) = CD Digital Audio + Super Audio CD
Ronald Moelker - recorders, ocean drum, gong, Tibetan bowls
Karin van Wezel - Tibetan bowls, Merel Moelker - voice, Andrew Read - double bass |
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ID: ACDHJ028-2 CDs: 1 Type: SACD |
Subcollection: Voices AMOR VINCIT -- “Love conquers” or, to quote the full verse, Omnia vincit amor, nos et cedamus amori, “Love conquers all, let us too yield to love” (Vergil, 70 BC - 19 BC, Eclogae 10.69).
Today, these words by Vergil are as inspiring as ever, witness the 277,000 hits they yield when used as a search term in Google. Referring to such diverse cultural manifestations
as a painting by Caravaggio, a chamber choir, a song by Deep Purple, the title of a movie, these universal words clearly express an essential part of our daily experience. Anne and Caroline now contribute the music of their choice. Does it speak of the eternal love of music? The love of their intense teamwork? Your love as a listener? The present selection of songs is a result of the combined tastes of the performers, weighing notes and words, contrast and intensity. |
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ID: ACDHJ040-2 CDs: 1 Type: SACD |
Collection: Baroque Subcollection: Voices This CD is an anthology of the Dutch contrafact and contains poetry set to music.
These are not original songs but texts written on already existing and well-known melodies. These songs are sometimes called contrafacts: contra: against or at, factum: written on an already existing melody. Between 1550 and 1750 this was a much loved and much practised genre in the Netherlands. Numerous songbooks appeared, booklets in pocket format which could be easily produced from your pocket when you wanted to sing. They contained the texts and the melodies to which they should be sung, with a tune reference: wyse, voys, stemme, vpden voix, op de wyse van etc. We have to retrace these melodies to be able to sing the songs. Fortunately some songbooks have survived with the tunes added in musical notation. A great many other melodies can be traced back to the international song repertoire of the period. Other sources are for instance lute tablatures, dance books, etc.
It is remarkable how many tunes originate from outside the Netherlands. Many are French, English or Italian; fewer are German and Spanish. These must have been popular - or at least known - in the Netherlands, beside the familiar Dutch tunes.
Including works by Jan vander Noot, Coornhert, Vallet, Jan van Hoot, Bredero, Camphuysen, Hooft & Weyerman |
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ID: ACDHJ043-2 CDs: 1 Type: SACD |
Collection: Vocal Collection Subcollection: Voices The basse danse is a stately courtly dance who’s origin can be traced to Burgundy. It was enthusiastically taken up at numerous courts throughout Europe and flourished for a century long from the middle of the 15th century onwards. That courtly dance existed before this is clear: for example, a description of the basse danse can be found as early as ca. 1320, in a poem by the Toulousain priest, friar and troubadour Raimon de Cornet. No information however concerning its choreography can be found until the early 15th century.
The Brussels (Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, Ms 9085, ca.1470) and Toulouze (L’art et instruction de bien danser , ca. 1496, by Michel Toulouze) manuscripts are the two most important musical sources of the French basse dance; although both manuscripts are dated to the late 15th century, stylistically their music resembles the earlier decades of the century. These manuscripts, along with a few additional sources, contain around fifty cantus firmi , varying in length between twenty-four and sixty-two notes, notated in slow semibreves without rhythmical variation. It is assumed that the cantus firmi of these basse danses notated in long semibreves provided a monophonic basis for polyphonic instrumental improvisation. Evidence for such a practice can be found in some polyphonic examples written out on the tenor-melody Re di Spagna.
Regarding performance-tempo, Daniel Heartz points towards the relation between the music and the actual choreography in his study concerning the basse danse: according to Heartz, each semi-breve of the basse danse-melody corresponds to one figure in the dance. Each figure consisted out of four movements equal in length, while the musical accompaniment took up six beats. Thus, the dancers moved fluidly on their toes in a three-to-two proportion to the music.
Grand Désir - Ensemble for Late Medieval and Contemporary Music
The mezzo-soprano Anne Marieke Evers and the blockflute player Anita Orme Della Marta met at the beginning of their musical studies at the Conservatorium of Amsterdam in September 1997. They formed a duo shortly after, specializing in both contemporary music as well as medieval and renaissance music. Later in their careers, their paths led them to pursue further studies in medieval music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland, where they met the other ensemble members of Grand Désir. It was here that a common interest in the late-medieval music brought the group together in December 2004. Aside a few fixed members, Grand Désir likes to work with different musicians for each individual programme, thus creating the flexibility to obtain the perfect instrumentation for each project. Grand Désir performed their premiere in the ‘Fringe’ programme of the Utrecht Early Music Festival 2005. The ensemble has given numerous performances since in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia. |
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ID: BG0307 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Renaissance Subcollection: Ensemble Ensemble BELLA GERIT
SIMONE SORINI Superius
ENEA SORINI. Tenor / Contratenor
MAURO BORGIONI. Tenor / Contratenor
ANGELIKA MOTHS. Organo e Organo Portativo |
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ID: BR0022 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Baroque Some may believe the music of 18th Century Iberian composers to be less interesting than the music from Germany, France and Italy of this period. However, these two volumes of keyboard music illustrate the originality of Spanish and Portuguese composers Angles, Albéniz, Cantallos, Carvalho, Ferrer, Freixanet, Jacinto, Seixas and Soler. At the beginning of the 18th Century, Louis XI was King of Spain. He felt little enthusiasm for Spanish national art and preferred foreign artists. Consequently, Italian singers and composers gradually influenced the aristocratic tastes and the court life in Spain. It was a similar situation in Portugal. When King Johan V (1707-1750) became ruler of Portugal, he set about cultivating the arts in the city of Lisbon. Portuguese musicians had the opportunity to take apprenticeships in Italy while Italian musicians, such as Domenico Scarlatti were welcomed into Lisbon to perform. The authoritative musical figures during this time were! men of the church. Father Antonio Soler was a friar, organist and composer as well as an important theoretician who dominated the musical scene in Spain. The first pianofortes were being manufactured and Soler was fortunate to have a piano at the monastery. Although he wrote for the organ, the compositional quality of his keyboard works show that he had the piano in mind. His Portuguese counterpart was José António Carlos de Seixas. Seixas became Portugal?s finest keyboard player of this period who bridged the gap between Baroque and Classical eras. Both composers did not simply duplicate Italian idioms, but developed and expanded the style while recalling their Spanish and Portuguese roots. They blended vocal-like melodies into quasi-contrapuntal lines and simple block harmonies. This formed a model on which classical composers such as Haydn and Mozart were to base their compositions. |
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ID: BRIL6321 CDs: 1 Type: DVD5 |
Collection: Choral Collection Subcollection: Choir 1 DVD 16:9
Total time: 00:42:50
Region: (All) PAL, 2.35:1 ALL FORMATS
Sound Tracks: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital Stereo 5.1 |
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