The Renaissance Keyboard

William Byrd - The Complete Keyboard Music - Davitt Moroney (1999) {7CD Set, Hyperion CDA66551/7}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 3.02 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.17 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 78 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 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.

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.

On this CD Fabio Antonio Falcone presents recordings of possibly the two oldest examples of printed keyboard music. He uses three instruments, each of distinctive character: an Italian harpsichord after Alessandro Trasuntino (Venezia 1531) and a polygonal virginal after Domenico da Pesaro (ca.1550), both built by Roberto Livi. For Cavazzoni, he plays the organ of the Church of San Giuseppe, Montevecchio di Pergola, an instrument by a builder now unknown, which dates back to the end of the 17th century.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Complete Keyboard Works - Léon Berben (2015) {6CDs Set Aeolus AE-11021}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.53 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.16 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 150 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 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 Renaissance Players & Winsome Evans - The Sephardic Experience (1999) {4CD Box Set Celestial Harmonies 19911-2}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.33 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 674 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 90 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 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}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 294 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 145 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 146 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 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.

The portrait of John Bull on the cover of this two-CD U.S. release gives an idea for the uninitiated of what to expect from the composer's music: it's intense, single-minded, and even a bit demonic (although the hourglass topped with a skull with a bone in its mouth is apparently an alchemical symbol). Bull was, in the words of an unidentified writer quoted by harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, "the Liszt of the virginals." The most immediately apparent feature of his music is extreme virtuosity, on display especially in the mind-boggling set of variations entitled Walsingham (CD 1, track 8) and in the galliards of the pavan-galliard pairs. But the opposite pole in Bull's style exerts just as strong a pull: he is fascinated by strict polyphony by what would be called harmonic progressions, and by the close study of the implications contained within small musical units. As spectacular in their way as the keyboard fireworks are, the three separate settings of a tune called Why Ask You? on CD 2 are marvelous explorations of compressed musical gestures.

Tallis lived during a time of tremendous religious upheaval. The succession from Henry VIII to Edward VI, Edward to Mary Tudor and Mary to Elizabeth meant changes from Catholic to Protestant, and back again with Mary, before Elizabeth’s “third way” – a more accepting and moderate form of Protestantism.