Arauxo

Various Artists - L'Europe Musicale de la Renaissance (2013) [8CD BoxSet] {Outhere}
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© 2013 Outhere / Ricercar | RIC 106
Classical / Early Music

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.

The best thing about this CD of keyboard works from Spain and Central and South America is the warm, close sound, not what is normally heard from a harpsichord recording. It is as warm as the instrument's red and gold paintwork. The worst thing about the recording is the impression that there is little variation in tempo from work to work. The mix of pieces covers a wide period of time, stretching from the late Renaissance to the early Classical period. And the works are actually a mixture of tempo markings. What gives the impression of little difference, however, is Mario Videla's relatively strict, sometimes plodding, playing. There isn't enough of a difference between his Allegros and his Largos, and he seems to use ritards only at the very end of pieces, rarely using any kind of rubato to create interest within phrases.

Various Artists - Guide des Instruments Anciens (A Guide to Period Instruments) (2009) {8CD Box Set Ricercar RIC100}
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© 2009 Ricercar / Outhere Music | RIC100
Classical / Early Music / Medieval / Renaissance / Baroque

A Guide to Period Instruments: 200 pages full colour book + 8 CDs. Languages: French/English/German. This Guide to Period Instruments endeavours to answer the questions that every lover of early music has about the instruments used in these periods of music history. Text and recorded excerpts describe the origin and the development of every musical instrument from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century and place them in their historical context. There is a completely new presentation booklet, over 200 pages long and abundantly illustrated, as well as eight CDs of recorded examples of the instruments that shed new light upon major periods of music history.

Spanish and Portuguese organs are celebrated for their excellent trumpets (en chamade), but their splendid flutes, prestants, cornets, and reeds are less widely known. From the second half of the 17th century, organists in Spain and Portugal delighted in recreating the sounds of the battlefield on their instruments. The batalha has a simple harmonic structure; its interest lies principally in the stirring rhythm.

Hespèrion XXI & Jordi Savall - Ostinato (2002) {Alia Vox AV 9820}
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© 2002 Alia Vox | AV 9820
Classical / Early Music / Baroque / Renaissance

Ostinato is an anthology which brings together the most representative works of the art of improvisation and of a musical form based on a unique concept of the basso, which is repeated sequentially throughout the compositions.

Chicago's best-known early music ensemble The Newberry Consort exhilarates with VESPERS, a collection of dazzlingly original music for women’s voices. The composer? A mysterious early-17th-century Mexican named Juan de Lienas, whose style energetically oscillates between Renaissance and Baroque elements.

Chicago's best-known early music ensemble The Newberry Consort exhilarates with VESPERS, a collection of dazzlingly original music for women’s voices. The composer? A mysterious early-17th-century Mexican named Juan de Lienas, whose style energetically oscillates between Renaissance and Baroque elements.

The Aeolus issue of Bob van Asperen's Krieg und Frieden (War and Peace) is a rather unusual survey in several ways. The central theme of this is tied to the two major conflicts in continental Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the 80 Years War and the 30 Years War, both of which were ultimately resolved by the Westphalian Peace Accord of 1648. Generally when we think of the so-called battle pieces of olden times it brings up memories of music that is rather arcane and none too challenging – thundering, repeated major triads with a rolling tremolo in the bass.