Musica Nova

Johannes Ockeghem was an absolute master of counterpoint who, for more than 40 years at the end of the 15th century, ruled over Franco-Flemish polyphony under three French kings, Charles VII, Louis XI and Charles VIII. His works which are still all too rarely performed continue to fascinate to this day. The Missa prolationum, together with the Missa cuiusvis toni, is a tour de force of writing, reaching levels of complexity that can impress even the most experienced performers.

This is a lovingly designed and splendidly executed programme of secular works by one of the master wordsetters of his own or of any age, Josquin Desprez. It consists mainly of five- and six-part secular songs in French, in the Burgundian tradition, about the occasional delights but more often the wistfulness and sadness of love, with a fair helping of death and mourning added to the mixture.

Guillaume de Machaut - Les Motets - Ensemble Musica Nova (2011) {2CD Set Aeon AECD1108 rec 2002}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 426 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 219 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2002, 2011 Aeon | AECD 1108
Classical / Medieval / Early Music / 4th Century

Complete Motets of Machaut (re-release) Since the beauty, richness and diversity of such an oeuvre made it impossible to choose amongst the 23 motets by the Canon of Reims, the Musica Nova ensemble decided to embark on the adventure of a complete recording. Two years of work and research were necessary for putting this programme together, as the musicians strove for an in-depth approach to each motet in terms of both style and an instrumentation made possible by the very structure of the ensemble. This disc, which had a resounding critical success when first released, offers the first complete translation in modern French of Guillaume de Machaut's motets. An indispensable set!

Flemish composer Adrian Willaert – who served as maestro di capella at the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice from 1527 until his death in 1562 – contributed so much to the Italian renaissance; while he wasn't the first to develop the Venetian polychoral style, its propagation in the mid-sixteenth century may well be laid at his feet. Willaert helped introduce the forms of canzona and ricercare, which greatly aided the growth of instrumental music in the years to come. The nearly overarching interest in chromaticism among Italian composers in the late renaissance can be traced to Willaert's door. Nevertheless, toss a dart into a crowd of music scholars and chances are you won't manage to hit one that has much of an opinion about Willaert's work or his music – it is seldom recorded and CDs devoted to Willaert alone are rare. On their own, these aspects make Oehms Classics' Adrian Willaert: Musica Nova – featuring the talents of expert vocal ensemble Singer Pur – special, valuable, and significant for purposes of study and filling a major hole in the renaissance repertoire. But beyond that, it is a fine listening experience as well.

This new recording by Jordi Savall and his ensemble Hespèrion XXI enables us to discover the best pieces for consort of viols composed between 1500 and 1700. London, Venice, Rome, Versailles, Madrid : all the great European courts have been illuminated by this musica nova, this new style, dreaming of an harmony beyond time and frontiers. With this album, Jordi Savall sets a new standard by delivering the comprehensive vision of a repertoire he is already famous for.

Perhaps it all goes back to one dark winter’s night of the incipient and hope-filled year of 1400, at the dawn of a century that had just begun. A century which was soon to unravel the marvellous stories and odysseys of a newly rediscovered millennial civilization, an ancient era when philosophers taught wisdom and humanity, when the music of Orpheus could tame even the most savage of beasts. In the midst of so many novelties and marvels, it is no wonder that minstrels aspired to a new, more expressive and richer sound, to create a musica nova, or a new music, that came from a single instrument combining the love song of the old vihuela de arco or bowed fiddle, the rebab or troubadour’s rebec, and the sweet sounds of the Moorish lute, with its potential for beautiful harmonies and joyful rhythms, which gave way to the vihuela de mano in the wake of the successive expulsions of the Jews in 1492 and the Moriscos in 1609.