Diamand Ensemble

Marin Marais (1656–1728) besides being Louis XIV’s court musician, was a prolific composer. He composed both operas, certain of which were very successful, instrumental music and some (lost) religious vocal music. As a viol player he published five books which include some of the most interesting and beautiful music for the viol. These five books also are chock full of performance instructions both for the left hand as well as the bow hand. They are a gold mine for viol players and are as relevant to teaching a musician good technique on the viol nowadays as they were when originally printed in the late seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.

Jean Mouton was a Renaissance French composer and choirmaster, much acknowledged but more rarely recorded, who wrote a body of music that’s both technically inventive and immediately appealing. Here Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble—renowned exponents of sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish repertoire—perform all Mouton’s eight-part music, two four-part motets, and his only five-part Mass setting, the Missa Tu es Petrus. The latter is characterized by light, clear textures and a soaring cantus firmus, while the double-choir Nesciens mater is rightly famous for its ingenious canon. Sheer compositional skill aside, all these works demonstrate Mouton’s vivid and original imagination—one that has the ability to speak directly to our time.

Samuel Capricornus - Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt - Wiegräbe, Capricornus Ensemble Stuttgart (2017) {Coviello COV91721}
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© 2017 Coviello Classics | COV91721
Classical / Baroque / 17th Century / Sacred / Chamber Music

Even more than Antonio Bertali (1605-1669), Samuel Capricornus (1628-1665) belongs to composers of the 17th century, whose oeuvre is barely or only little discographically accessible. The Capricornus Ensemble Stuttgart takes care of his works and shows that the music of the Stuttgarter Hofkapellmeister (Capricornus) can easily cope with that of the Viennese Hofkapellmeister (Bertali). The Capricornus Ensemble Stuttgart is named after the Stuttgart chamber music director Samuel Capricornus. It is an international ensemble founded by the Stuttgart trumpet professor Henning Wiegrabe. The focus of the ensemble is to present treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

The circulation of artists and sovereigns between France and England in the seventeenth century resulted in the establishment of highly original genres in the latter country: the first recitatives, large-scale airs from masques and dramatic ‘scenes' provided fertile ground for experimentation and prepared the way for the birth of semi-opera. Sébastien Daucé explores this English vocal art in a programme tailor-made for one of today's most fascinating voices: Lucile Richardot, in the exquisite setting provided by Correspondances, subtly blends music, love, night and melancholy.”