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Also glorious is the Brumel "Dies irae" from his Missa pro defunctis, the earliest extant setting of the sequence. I would recommend the recordings of both the Huelgas Ensemble and the Clerks' Group (Huelgas is a bit more adventurous with instruments and such).
I see that Jeffrey is featuring the Tallis Scholars performance. Does anyone know if this alternative is any good:
Conductor: Dominique Visse
Performers: Ensemble Clément Janequin, Les Sacqueboutiers
Label: Harmonia Mundi FR.
Release Date: 3/11/2008
Running time: 58:12
It's certainly more affordable.
It surely is good, based on the label and performer. Just guessing here but it is probably less glassy and crystalline. I reviewed the Tallis because it is the one I know and love.
For those of you who have not heard the music of Brumel, might I direct you to the following website. A movement from the Brumel Requiem can be heard as well as that from his splendid contemporary, Pierre de la Rue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_...h?
v=_AUW1NwDKnY
Wishing you a Blessed Advent!
Might I also recommend recordings of this work by the Huelvas Ensemble on the Sony label and an older but beautiful recording by the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart on the Brilliant label.
You can listen to the entire album on streaming audio for free here:
http://free.napster.com/view/alb...tml?
id=12155165
For a piece that really makes you wonder at how accurate our views of history are, may I suggest Solage's "Fumeux fume par fumee".
From Wikipedia: the singers appear to get completely lost, singing lower and lower, and more and more chromatically; it contains some of the lowest-tessitura vocal writing in any music of the period. Solage was satirizing a group that called itself the "Society of Smokers," which included the nephew of Guillaume de Machaut. Since tobacco was not to be known in Europe for another two centuries, the substance being smoked has been variously speculated to be either hashish or opium, and the music well represents the effect of the drug on the enthusiastic musicians.
I guess that makes it perhaps history's first piece of psychedelic music! Far out!
A wonderful piece and a wonderful recording.
I first got to know the Earthquake Mass from an old, old David Munrow record set called "The Art of the Renaissance". It was only the Gloria that was recorded there...but it was enough to get me hooked.
Another wonderful Tallis Scholars recording of Renaissance Music is their disc by Heinrich Isaac.
The Tallis/Brumel CD is available on iTunes, with the standard 30-second previews.
I own and have listened intensely to the "Earthquake" versions of the Tallis Scholars, Huelvas Ensemble, and the Ensemble Clément Janequin. All three are good, yet I prefer the latter two. The Tallis sing in a very English tradition, pearlescent, silvery, almost Pre-Raphaelite. Yet the sound engineer did a shabby job, and the cd company is skimpy with filling up cd. The Huelvas are Continental, with an emphasis on history and clarity -- and clarity is hard to do with 12 parts! Yet the Ensemble Clément Janequin is SUBLIME! Otherworldly! It takes a minute only to get used to the countertenors. The use of instruments actually has historical foundation and adds to the work's sonority. The Agnus Dei is overpowering.
The "Earthquake" has always been my favorite of the Franco-Flemish school, however much I love Josquin -- really a late flowering of the Gothic. It's a long Mass. Could it be used in today's Extraordinary Form?
Thanks to Mr. Tucker for bring this to our attention.
Do you know Robert Carver?
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