The Hilliard Ensemble

Josquin Desprez - The Hilliard Ensemble - Motets Et Chansons
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Label/Cat#: EMI # CDC 7 49209 2 | Country/Year: Germany 1987, 1984
Genre: Classical | Style: Renaissance

…Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime…

Boris Yoffee was born in Russia in 1968. There, he studied violin and composition and before the breakup of the Soviet Union he immigrated to Israel, where he studied at Tel Aviv University. In 1997, he moved to Germany to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm. By 2009, he had amassed an enormous number of short works. Thus, the performers who had been asked to record his Song of Songs looked through approximately 800 of them in order to select the pieces they wanted to perform. The Rosamunde Quartet is a German string quartet that was formed in 1992; since the group disbanded in 2010, this is its last recording. The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet that is well known for its performance of Renaissance, medieval, and contemporary music. It has often performed the works of Arvo Pärt, whose music is somewhat similar to that of Yoffe.

Guillaume de Machaut - The Hilliard Ensemble - Motets
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Label/Cat#: ECM # New Series 1823 | Country/Year: Germany 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Medieval, Vocal

…Of course, nobody can coax the impact out of a dissonance like the Hilliard Ensemble. Countertenors David James and David Gould shape Machaut's almost Faulknerian top-voice syntax into affecting emotional statements, and even listeners new to medieval music will become ensnared in the poet's quest for the slightest glance of regard from his unattainable Lady…

Guillaume de Machaut - The Hilliard Ensemble - Motets
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Label/Cat#: ECM New Series # 1823 | Country/Year: Germany 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Medieval, Sacred, Vocal

"…Countertenors David James and David Gould shape Machaut's almost Faulknerian top-voice syntax into affecting emotional statements, and even listeners new to medieval music will become ensnared in the poet's quest for the slightest glance of regard from his unattainable Lady. (…) Still, it's been a while since a major disc of Machaut motets was released (this disc contains 18 pieces, a few of them sacred), and if the Hilliard Ensemble doesn't close the book on this music, they nevertheless interpret it beautifully for our times." ~allmusicguide

The motets of Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) are complicated works. Even casual listeners will notice that each of the three lines of music has its own text – one rapid and wordy, one moderate in speed, and one just a few words long. Musically they contain structural intricacies to which scholars devote pleasant lifetimes of research in old French libraries. Yet the interpretation of even music as arcane as this depends on the spirit of the age. Rationalists of earlier decades performed Machaut with rather harsh exactitude, seeking to clarify the subtle repetition schemes of Machaut's motets and polyphonic songs.

The Hilliard Ensemble disbanded in 2014, but recordings continue to trickle out to the delight of the group's fans. This one, made in the Netherlands in October of that year, must be among the last ones. It features a setting, written for the group in 2008 by composer John Casken, of the mysterious medieval English poem The Dream of the Rood. A rood is a cross on a large beam or screen (the word "rod" is related). The poem not only relates the narrator's dream of talking to the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified but also (you may want to sit down for this) the dreams of the wood in the cross itself.

Nicolas Gombert - Missa Media Vita In Morte Sumus - The Hilliard Ensemble (2006) {ECM New Series 1884}
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© 2006 ECM Records | ECM New Series 1884
Classical / Renaissance / Choral

The music of Flemish composer Nicolas Gombert (accent it like "Dilbert"), active in the first generation after Josquin in the 1530s and 1540s, has remained almost completely untouched by the growth in audience enthusiasm for Renaissance music in recent years. Is this because, according to one of those music-historical sidelights reproduced in the notes here, Gombert was once fired from a job for committing "gross indecency" with a choirboy? More likely it's the relatively unchanging texture of his unaccompanied choral music; although it is far from inexpressive, it is quite dense. His language is derived from that of his mentor Josquin, but there are no high-relief points of imitation to grab onto, no moments of lucidity. It's sort of a Renaissance wall of sound, dark-colored, but with flashes of intense red and blue.