October 18, 2007
Gratuitous Musickal Blegging
This past weekend was the seven year old's youth choir debut at church. For the anthem they sang a charming little Jubilate by Praetorius, a sort of two-part round. The gel was quite plainly audible among the second set of voices. Very, very nice.
This got me stoked up again on mid-17th Century polyphony. To that end, last evening I listened to a recording of Monteverdi's eighth book of madrigals, published in Venice in the late 1630's. Also, I finally decided that although I enjoy John Eliot Gardiner's big performance of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespro Della Beata Vergine recorded at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, I also wanted a recording without so much echo and boom in it. To this end, today I ordered the somewhat more intimate version by Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort. While at the devil's website, I also picked up a recording of Monteverdi's "Un Concert Spirituel," a CD rerelease of a cassette set I had years ago. It's a collection of mostly two and three part motets, many lifted from other works including the Vespers. Just for the heck of it, and because the devil tempted me, I also tossed in a recording of a Te Deum by Michel-Richard Delalande (a French composer of the Sun King's era) performed by William Christie and Les Arts Florrisants.
I will, of course, post reviews of these recordings. (Oh, yes. I will.) I know the Vespers pretty well, some of the other Monteverdi motets not so well. Of Delalande's musick, I frankly know extremely little, but I know a thing or two about his contemporary Charpentier and the general period, and I know that LAF is a crack group for this reportoire.
So, this leads me to two different blegs:
1. I'd like to build up my Praetorius library. He's really outside the scope of my musickal knowledge and the only time I hear him in general is via an Empire Brass recording served up on the radio. If anybody has any suggestions about works and recordings I ought to get, I'd appreciate it.
2. On the general topic of early musick performances, a long while back somebody dropped a comment to a post I did about Emma Kirkby and the Consort of Musicke (my favorite professional combo for this sort of thing), about a wonderful group hailing from a music department in some small school in downstate Illinois or Indiana (I think). I can't find the post anymore. If you left that recommendation or know anything about the people to whom I'm refering, I'd appreciate a comment.
Oh, and while we're on music, the seven year old's class also went to a stripped down kiddie version of Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel this week, from which she came home positively bursting. The gel really seems to have both a talent and a fondness for vocal music. To this end, I'm thinking of introducing her to my DVD of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo performed by Jordi Savall, Le Concert des Nations and La Capella Reial de Catalunya at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu. The story is compact enough that I think she could follow it, and I love this performance more and more every time I hear it.
Posted by Robert at October 18, 2007 03:19 PM | TrackBackI'm sure more recommendations is the last thing you need, but I'm really enjoying "Thomas Tallis: Music at the Reformation" by Chapelle du Roi. I could listen to that till my ears fall off. It's available, of course, at the devil's website.
Posted by: ScurvyOaks at October 18, 2007 05:22 PMWell, being a Lutheran musician myself, I'm quite familiar with Michael Praetorius. He was ridiculously prolific, and I mean that in both the good and bad senses: There are a lot of "throw away" pieces that he wrote, but many, many gems as well. Compounding the problem, his main works survive in two vast collections: Terpsichore, which has, like, somewhere over 200 instrumental dances in it (Even Bach didn't write that many!), and the even more monumental Musae Sioniae (I had to look up the spelling for that. LOL!), which has about a thousand (!!) chorales (Again, putting Bach to shame in numerical terms). If you're looking for the vocal stuff, it's the second collection you'll want the "greatest hits" out of, obviously.
Regardless of this problem, there aren't really many "undiscovered gems" in those books, so if you buy, let's say, five different Praetorius collections by five different early music groups, you'll probably still find some overlap in the repertoire. At that point, it's all a matter of which group you prefer. Sorry I can't be more speciffic, but I'm really not much of a Praetorius fan, much preferring the music of his contemporary, and the greatest German composer before Bach, Heinrich Schutz:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schütz
Get anything with "Saul, Saul" included, and prepared to be positively amazed. He was so far ahead of his time in terms of what he allowed for in terms of dissonance in his counterpoint that a lot of his music sounds modern! If you think of counterpoint from this period to be the smooth and serene Palestrina style stuff, you'll get a severe jolt from Schutz. I love his music. Gives me that goose-pimply effect.
Posted by: Hucbald at October 19, 2007 10:49 AMAll recommendations always heartily welcomed.
I've not heard much Tallis, being much more familiar with Byrd and his other younger Elizabethan contemporaries.
As for Schutz, excellent idea. I remember the first time I heard "Saul, Saul" - it was in a baroque music course in college. 'Bout fell out of my chair.
Posted by: Robbo the LB at October 19, 2007 11:08 AMOn the subject of Byrd, in case you don't have this, "Ave Verum Corpus: Motets & Anthems by Byrd," Cambridge Singers and Rutter, is wonderful. Other than the Ave Verum Corpus (another old choir favorite) everything on this disk was new to me. Byrd's "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" is absolute perfection. Enough to make me readily forgive Byrd his recusancy. ;)
I've heard a little Schutz, but never "Saul, Saul." I guess the unmentionable retailer is about to get some more money from me.
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