Souther Hillman Fury

Excellent album steeped in the Southern California country-rock sound of the '70s, with all the usual suspects – Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel, Kenny Edwards, and Russ Kunkel, producer Peter Asher – all Ronstadt veterans, plus Glenn Frey and Don Henley from the Eagles) in place on such songs as "Faithless Love," "Simple Man, Simple Dream," and "Silver Blue".

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.

Some years ago Austrian radio ORF started a series of recordings with polyphony from the renaissance on its own label. The ensemble The Sound and the Fury has recorded music by well-known masters like Nicolas Gombert, Pierre de la Rue and Johannes Ockeghem. But they have also paid attention to some forgotten composers of the 15th century. One of them is Guillaume Faugues. As so often there is quite a difference between his reputation in his own time and in modern times. It is very likely nothing of his oeuvre has ever been recorded before.

Some years ago Austrian radio ORF started a series of recordings with polyphony from the renaissance on its own label. The ensemble The Sound and the Fury has recorded music by well-known masters like Nicolas Gombert, Pierre de la Rue and Johannes Ockeghem. But they have also paid attention to some forgotten composers of the 15th century. One of them is Guillaume Faugues. As so often there is quite a difference between his reputation in his own time and in modern times. It is very likely nothing of his oeuvre has ever been recorded before.

Only a few reliable biographical data have been preserved on Johannes Ockeghem: at the beginning of the 1450s, presumably between the ages of 30 and 35, he was appointed as a singer to the French royal court, where he remained until his death in 1497.

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.