Pierre Pallardy La Salute Viene Dalla Pancia

A profoundly modern dimension emerges from this confrontation between English works from the 17th century (Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke) and works from the 20th and 21st centuries (Philippe Hersant, Franck Martin, Thierry Pécou). Coming from highly different musical universes, each composition is, however, largely inspired by the founding themes of Shakespeares play, sometimes taking up excerpts from it. The text is recited in English, or rather Shakespeares Old English, as are all the sung parts, in order to reproduce the strong, sweet accent of that tongue.

Pierre de la Rue wurde möglicherweise um 1452 in Doornik/Tournai im heutigen Belgien geboren. Dort arbeitete sein Vater Jehan als Illuminator (Buchmaler), seine Mutter, Gertrude de la Haye, stammte ebenfalls aus Tournai. Im 15. Jahrhundert waren dort beide Familiennamen geläufig. Wir nehmen an, dass Pierres Ausbildung, besonders als Musiker, mit einer Verbindung als Chorsänger an der berühmten Kathedrale der Stadt anfing. Als solcher bekam er dann, wie dort alle Chorsänger, die Tonsur. Wenn so, dann war das die erste entscheidende Situation seines Lebenslaufs, den er letztlich als Diaconus beschließen sollte. Zum Priester wurde de la Rue anscheinend nie geweiht.

For the upcoming 500th anniversary of the death of the great Franco-Flemish composer Pierre de la Rue (around 1460-1518), the vocal ensemble The Sound and the Fury, which specializes in early music, has recorded a selection of the composer’s artistic masses for the label FRA BERNARDO, which impressively reflect the high standard at the court of the music-loving and music-savvy Margaret of Austria. The Pierre de la Rue masses on this recording have one thing in common: they are all based on monadic models, thus in keeping with the most traditional of cyclic mass composition models, the cantus firmus mass.

A profoundly modern dimension emerges from this confrontation between English works from the 17th century (Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke) and works from the 20th and 21st centuries (Philippe Hersant, Franck Martin, Thierry Pécou). Coming from highly different musical universes, each composition is, however, largely inspired by the founding themes of Shakespeares play, sometimes taking up excerpts from it. The text is recited in English, or rather Shakespeares Old English, as are all the sung parts, in order to reproduce the strong, sweet accent of that tongue.

Pierre de la Rue is another of those composers who contributed so prolifically to the richness of musical life in the Low Countries during the late fifteenth century. If today he is less well known than some of his contemporaries, the distinguished advocacy of Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble should do much to redress the balance.

Beauty Farm is a 2014 founded vocal group focused on the Franco-Flemish polyphony of the renaissance. The international ensemble is based in the Carthusian Monastery at Mauerbach (Austria). The singers are members of well known ensembles like Capilla flamenca, Huelgas Ensemble, Vox Luminis, Collegium Vocale Gent and Graindelavoix. On this extensive release, the ever-acclaimed vocal quartet presents four masses of Pierre de la Rue, all composed during the composer's last creative period. Pierre de la Rue is one of the most fascinating and yet most elusive members of the talented generation of composers from around 1500. On the works recorded here he demonstrates his complete polyphonic skills and thus gives the melancholy an intellectual, complex nuance. The necessary lightness is provided by the voices of Bart Uvyn, Hans Jörg Mammel, Hannes Wagner and Joachim Höchbauer.

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.