The Renaissance Keyboard

The Renaissance Players & Winsome Evans - The Sephardic Experience (1999) {4CD Box Set Celestial Harmonies 19911-2}
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© 1999 Celestial Harmonies | 19911-2
Classical / Medieval / Early Music

The Sephardic Experience quadrilogy is a priceless sound document in which the Renaissance Players present their own performance versions of well– and lesser–known romansas (ballads), kantigas (religious songs) and muwashshahat (poetical forms) which have survived for centuries entirely via oral/aural transmission by parents, grandparents, friends and acquaintances within the family circle, while working, or as a form of ad hoc entertainment in Sephardic communities of the West and East. Sadly, as the end of the 20th century draws near we are witnessing the alarming disappearance of Spanish–Jewish culture due to vast, worldwide changes in social circumstances. In fact, these songs are no longer a part of the rich, musical fabric of the everyday life of the Sephardim.

Songs for a Wise King - Cantigas de Santa Maria, Vol. I - The Renaissance Players (1996) {Walsingham Classics WAL8007-2}
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© 1996 Walsingham Classics | WAL 8007-2
Classical / Medieval / Early Music / 13th Century / Spanish

In 13th century Spain, seven hundred years before anyone thought of using the term 'world music', a remarkable king named Alfonso the Wise was creating it. Alfonso X, King of Castile and Leon, filled his courts with the finest poets, musicians, artists and scientists he could find, from all three of the Iberian peninsula's great religions. Christian, Jews and Muslims worked side by side, creating a body of work that included groundbreaking scientific and astronomic treatises, translations of epic poems and scriptures from as far away as India—and some of the earliest and most sophisticated blends of European and Middle Eastern/Arabic music. The greatest of these was the enormous collection of songs in praise of the Virgin Mary now called Cantigas de Santa Maria.

William Byrd - The Complete Keyboard Music - Davitt Moroney (1999) {7CD Set, Hyperion CDA66551/7}
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© 1999 Hyperion Records | CDA66551/7
Classical / Renaissance / Period Instruments

The Gramophone Award-winning artist, Davitt Moroney has spent more than fifteen years planning this momentous project and Hyperion are proud to be able to bring Davitt’s wealth of expertise and musicianship to the label. As an authentic complete survey of this music, six different instruments have been used for the recording – two different harpsichords, muselar virginal, clavichord, chamber organ, and the Ahrend organ at L’Église-Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France (where the huge and high nave creates an echo that lasts for nearly fifteen seconds, not unlike the acoustic at Lincoln Cathedral where Byrd was the organist and master of the choristers).

The 'tablature of Jan of Lublin', as this significant collection is commonly known, belonged to the monastery of Canons Regular in the Polish city of Krasìnik near Lublin, and was bound in 1540. The owner and primary scribe was this Jan, or Johannes, of whom very little is known or can be surmised, but the contents of his book are a treasure trove of compositions and musical instruction illustrating what keyboardists of the region in the 16th century would have learned and played, including counterpoint, composition, organ-tuning, liturgical music and — perhaps richest of all — intabulations (arrangements) for keyboard of polyphonic vocal music from across Europe and original compositions for keyboard including 'preambula' (improvisatory preludes) and dances under the generic title 'corea' or with more specific names, several of them Polish.

Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) - Complete Keyboard Music Vol. 1
Bernhard Klapprott, Harpsichord & Virginal
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Label/Cat#: MDG "Scene" # 607 0563-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1994
Genre: Classical | Style: Renaissance, Baroque

Thomas Tomkins was an English composer of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. In addition to being one of the prominent members of the English madrigal school, he was a skilled composer of keyboard and consort music, and the last member of the English virginalist school….

Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) - Complete Keyboard Music Vol. 2
Bernhard Klapprott, Harpsichord & Virginal
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 432 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "Scene" # 607 0704-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1996
Genre: Classical | Style: Renaissance, Baroque

Thomas Tomkins was an English composer of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. In addition to being one of the prominent members of the English madrigal school, he was a skilled composer of keyboard and consort music, and the last member of the English virginalist school…

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Complete Keyboard Works - Léon Berben (2015) {6CDs Set Aeolus AE-11021}
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© 2015 Aeolus AE-11021
Classical / Renaissance / Baroque / Organ / Harpsichord

This is a fabulous six-CD set of the complete keyboard works of one of the key figures of European music, Jan Pierterszoon Sweelinck – justifiably referred to in his time, and subsequently, as 'Der Organistenmascher'. Of around eighty surviving works, the majority are for organ – covering four and a half of these discs – and the remainder are for harpsichord. Among the works are a few which can be - and sometimes are - played on either instrument, and Léon Berben's choices in these cases sound just right to me.

The first complete recording of the keyboard works of Andrea Gabrieli (1532-1585), one of the most famous and influential composers of the late Renaissance and the most important representative of the Venetian School. A native of Venice, he went to Germany to study with Lassus. Later he became organist of the famous San Marco in Venice, the most important post in Northern Italy at that moment.

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
No illusion here…don't miss this beauty
If you've even been confused about the two line-ups of Renaissance and how the story played out, you need to look no further than our band page here which has a forum thread called "A Renaissance confusion" written by Joolz which spells out this complete history in full detail.