World premiere recordings of sacred music by a forgotten master of the Spanish Baroque.
Mozart 250th Anniversary Edition: Complete Sacred Music by Harnoncourt / Mozart / Vienna Concentus Musicus was released Sep 19, 2005 on the Warner Classics label. Mozart 250th Anniversary Edition: Complete Sacred Music is a 13-disc set.
Continuing the series ‘Bach’s Contemporaries’, this volume concentrates on the wonderful music of Johann Schelle—a cousin of Kuhnau (another composer featured in this series). This immensely striking sacred music by Schelle (one of Bach’s predecessors in the post of Kantor in Leipzig’s famous Thomas Church) brings together a top-flight group of soloists and a large and colourful assembly of instrumentalists, and presents remarkable and splendidly varied music which not only stands up proudly in its own musical right, but also greatly enhances our understanding of Bach’s own sacred writing.
Mantua and the Gonzaga family represent one of the summits of European humanistic and Renaissance expression. This project addresses one of the city's greatest periods with sacred works by the leading musicians of the Gonzaga court, at a time when music was the primary tool employed by the Gonzaga dukes to assert their prestige over other Italian cities; this golden age began with the foundation of the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara and its cappella under Giaches de Wert during the rule of Guglielmo Gonzaga in 1565 and lasted until the sack of Mantua in 1630. The Ensemble Biscantores specialise in the performance of late Renaissance and Baroque music; here, thanks to the research, study and transcriptions made by its director Luca Colombo, they explore the Mantuan court of the Gonzagas and the liturgy specific to the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara.
Continuing the series 'Bach's Contemporaries', this volume concentrates on the wonderful music of Johann Schelle — a cousin of Kuhnau (another composer featured in this series). This immensely striking sacred music by Schelle (one of Bach's predecessors in the post of Kantor in Leipzig's famous Thomas Church) brings together a top-flight group of soloists and a large and colourful assembly of instrumentalists, and presents remarkable and splendidly varied music which not only stands up proudly in its own musical right, but also greatly enhances our understanding of Bach's own sacred writing.
One of Michael Haydn's symphonies was taken for Mozart for a long time, and a good deal of their music is linked by its Salzburg roots. The sacred music on this disc, however, either postdates or predates Mozart and sounds very little like him. Included are four short masses for the Lenten season (all but one lacking Glorias, like some other masses of the period) and a charming Graduale for Palm Sunday. All but the concluding Missa Sanctae Crucis were written in the 1790s, after an ecclesiastical reform mandated simple, syllabic settings of liturgical texts, and the Missa Sanctae Crucis is a simple, youthful work. The music is accompanied only by a small continuo group.
World premiere recordings of psalms and hymns by a forgotten luminary of the Florentine Baroque.