Andrew L. Mccart Phd

Step back to a time when the night was an antithesis to the clarity of illumined day. In the especially fertile imaginations of the 19th-century Romantic composers, this was a time when the world gave itself over to mystery and magic.

Little is known of the life of Paschal de L'Estocart, the French composer of the late Renaissance who was roughly a contemporary of Claude Le Jeune (1528 -1600). He seems to have been sympathetic to the Protestant Reformers – he spent considerable time in Germany and his music was published in Geneva – but later in life he applied unsuccessfully to the French King for a position at an abbey. His collection of psalms and motets, Sacrae Cantiones, 16 of which are recorded here, are mostly in French, along with several in Latin, and was dedicated to Calvinist Count Palatine Johann Casimir in 1582. This collection also includes his Ode in 12 parts, set to religious texts in French. L'Estocart's music is typical of late Renaissance polyphony, eclectic in its use of a cantus firmus, imitative counterpoint, and homophonic writing, with an unusually free use of dissonance. The French mixed a cappella ensemble Ludus Modalis, led by Bruno Boterf, specializes in music of this era and sings with passion and authority. Intonation is immaculate and tone quality is pure and unforced. The recorded sound is clean, but spacious and warm.

Counterfeit² is the first full-length studio album by Martin Gore, the primary songwriter for the band Depeche Mode.
Martin Gore's Counterfeit² beat David Gahan's Paper Monsters to the punch by just over a month; with some better timing - and, you know, a synchronous album from Andrew Fletcher - Depeche Mode could've pulled a Kiss. This first full-length from DM's principal songwriter follows an EP he released 14 years prior. On that EP, Gore covered some of his favorite songs and made them sound unsurprisingly like his group circa that year. As one can tell from the title of this disc, this is the same concept, and even some of the most ardent fans no doubt breathed another sigh of relief with the knowledge that he decided once again to let other people provide the lyrics…