Calling EM Fans!

[Corlyss_D]

There have in the past been so few of us that posting on EM hardly seemed worth the effort to find info on it. Chalkie suggested that we had more than I thought. So let's have a show of hands.

So far, the list that I came up with from memory is as follows:

Ralph
John (jbuck)
John (charmnewton)
Chalkie
Henry (slofstra)
Frank (FEBNYC)
Absinthe
Possibly Gurn Blanston, but don't quote me
Moi
And the late Roger Beare, included here for sentimental reasons

How many out there like and actively collect or attend concerts of music in the EM period, say 750-1700, or as MoM styles it, Music Before Bach?

[Lance]

There have in the past been so few of us that posting on EM hardly seemed worth the effort to find info on it. Chalkie suggested that we had more than I thought. So let's have a show of hands.

So far, the list that I came up with from memory is as follows:

Ralph
John (jbuck)
John (charmnewton)
Chalkie
Henry (slofstra)
Frank (FEBNYC)
Absinthe
Possibly Gurn Blanston, but don't quote me
Moi
And the late Roger Beare, included here for sentimental reasons

How many out there like and actively collect or attend concerts of music in the EM period, say 750-1700, or as MoM styles it, Music Before Bach?

Hmm, I wonder how LANCE fits into this? Whaddaya think, Lyssie?

[Chalkperson]

There have in the past been so few of us that posting on EM hardly seemed worth the effort to find info on it. Chalkie suggested that we had more than I thought. So let's have a show of hands.

So far, the list that I came up with from memory is as follows:

Ralph
John (jbuck)
John (charmnewton)
Chalkie
Henry (slofstra)
Frank (FEBNYC)
Absinthe
Possibly Gurn Blanston, but don't quote me
Moi
And the late Roger Beare, included here for sentimental reasons

How many out there like and actively collect or attend concerts of music in the EM period, say 750-1700, or as MoM styles it, Music Before Bach?

and...
The Flayin Dutchman, when he goes back to college
Impower out at The Joshua Tree

OK that's twelve, how about Henry (Slofstra) to make it a Bakers Dozen, if you have that expression here...

but wait, let's not forget Hiopoe, who actually sings in an EM Group...and for sure i'll reccomend some EM on sloftra's thread, more polypohnic and choral however, leaving all the Raw and Sexy stuff to Corlyss...

[jbuck919]

One of the problems with EM appreciation is how far removed it is from us, and there are three distinct discontinuities with more modern music (polyphony breaking the tradition of monody, mature Renaissance polyphony, and tonality). So I imagine it is always going to be a specialized and antiquarian interest, but for those who do not have it trust me, Corlyss, and all the others she listed: You do not know what you are missing. Only western music has ever reached the level of high art, and it did so, I would say, three times (Corlyss might say four because she has more appreciation of what I consider immature polyphony than I do). The unknown composer of the so-called gradual of the type "justus ut palma" and Palestrina are as great as any culture could reasonably expect, and the fact that even greater heights were reached in a later artistic development is nothing short of a miracle.

[absinthe]

This has prompted me to listen to Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli in the double choir arrangement by Soriano, the Pontifical High Mass of St Sylvester.

It's sung by the William Byrd Choir in the Sistine Chapel after some restoration but before the drapes/hangings were replaced so the echo isn't difficult to imagine. Eerily, extraordinarily beautiful. Two cantors start the Introit before the choir enters, tones rising in the softest of swells.

I'd better go...this is moving me...

.

[jserraglio]

does attending a performance of the Beowulf epic by Ben Bagley qualify as em? if so, please enroll me.
jjS

[some guy]

The early music I've heard, I like very much, but I don't know very much about EM, not to any depth, which is why it's so great to have such enthusiasts as Corlyss to pass along tidbits from time to time.

I'd be very loathe to see fewer posts on EM.

[jbuck919]

The early music I've heard, I like very much, but I don't know very much about EM, not to any depth, which is why it's so great to have such enthusiasts as Corlyss to pass along tidbits from time to time.

I'd be very loathe to see fewer posts on EM.

We have to have sufficient in order to later have fewer in the first place.

It is very easy to understand why we have numbers of posters who lover Wagner, etc., without knowing much about the older stuff. I don't know Corlyss' story, but I have a rather weird background to qualify me for this. In the first place, I am an extremely educated Catholic boy, even though I gave it up years ago, so that's how I know the Gregorian. When I was working for the Center for Applied Linguistics, one of my colleagues was a nun who had to take on a secular job (and was extremely good at it). We became friends, and she was the last person I ever knew in person (she died in 2003) who knew the Gregorian well and shared my appreciation. Prior to that, I was good friends with Peter Jeffrey in college (honest folks, I was), and he is considered one of the great scholars on the subject.

As for medieval/Renaissance music, I also come by that honestly, as my college advisor was Lewis Lockwood, who originally made his rep in this area. I always knew that his connoisseurship was comprehensive (I also took the Mozart course with him) and beyond reproach, but at the time he was considered mainly an EM expert.

I never claimed that I have not been extremely lucky.

[Corlyss_D]

Oh my! This is very gratifying to see so . . . . er . . . this many.

Lance, you're just pulling my ears. I know you don't like anyone earlier than Schumann.

Thanks for reminding me of the others, Chalkie. Henry was already on the list. I forgot about Brendan, who is most definitely one.

J, I remember you were quite excited about the website with 5 years worth of 1-hr programs on EM in which the Everest of US university EM programs, The Early Music Insititute of the U of Indiana@Bloomington, covered just about every major composer and group in the biz. For the benefit of others who arrived after the last time I posted the link, http://www.indiana.edu/~harmonia/archives.htm contains some marvelous stuff to help you get acquainted with EM.

Ralph
John (jbuck)
John (charmnewton)
Chalkie
Henry (slofstra)
Frank (FEBNYC)
Absinthe
Possibly Gurn Blanston, but don't quote me
The late Roger Beare, included here for sentimental reasons
Brendan
Nick (Flaying Dutchman)
Impower
Hiapoe
JSerraglio
Absinthe
Some guy

We have to have sufficient in order to later have fewer in the first place.

John's right. If there were any fewer, I'd be taking down what's already up. The low numbers in the past have served to justify my laziness. I'll just have to be more diligent in the future.

[Corlyss_D]

My creds in EM started from what used to be a sort of annual broadcast in the early 60s of the NY Pro Musica's performance of the Play of Daniel taped at the Cloisters in NYC. The first time I recall seeing it on WETA was c. 1962, back when I was quite the music sponge. I was completely transported by the performance and the setting.

Sometime around 1965, MHS, to which I had belonged for awhile, offered a recording of Carmina Burana by Studio Der Fruhen Musik (aka The Early Music Quartet) as a bonus. Believe it or not, I knew about the songs as medieval music long before I had heard of the Orff. Well, I was blown away by the performances, which were full of that raw, flamboyant, and sexy Eastern Mediterranean and Arabic style I have come to identify so with the group. No mystery, really when you know the background of the principal singer, Andrea Van Ramm - she was a caberet singer before she started performing with Binkley and Jones, who were the core of the group. How the other one - Grayston Burgess late of Westminster Abbey Choir, learned to sing erotically like that is one of the great mysteries of life, perhaps owing to his stage experience long before producers were routinely putting countertenors on stage. This group is one of the seminal groups of the EM movement in that their style was so influential and so many who later became superstars of the movement passed thru the group or studied with the Binkley and Jones before setting off on their own, among them Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras, Barbara Thornton, Benjamin Bagby, Nigel Rogers, Grayston Burgess, and others I can't think of now.

Around the same time 1964-65, Nonesuch had swung into full production of affordable lps covering the kind of EM repertoire that was new and adventuresome in those days. Toss in a couple of early recordings of Handel operas with Teresa Stich-Randall and Lucia Popp and Maureen Forrester on Everest, the 1966 revolutionary Messiah by Davis on Philips, and the Early Music Consort of England under David Munrow, and voila, you have a full-fledged EM fan.

There are some books on the EM revival that I can recommend:

Harry Haskel: The Early Music Revival
Joel Cohen: Reprise: The Extraordinary Revival of Early Music
Bernard Sherman: Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers (a gold mine of book with some of EM's heaviest hitters: Marcel Peres of Ensemble Organum on Plainchant; Susan Hellauer of Anonymous 4 on Performing EM; the late Barbara Thornton of Sequentia on Hildegard von Bingen, Christopher Page of the Gothic Singers; Paul Hillier founder of the Hilliard Ensemble and Theater of Voices and for a time Chair of the Indiana EM Institute on Renaissance Sacred Music; Peter Phillips of Tallis Scholars on the group and Palestrina; Alan Curtis and Rinaldo Alessandrini and Anthony Rooley on Monteverdi; Andrew Lawrence-King on Renaissance Instrumental Music; John Butt and Malcolm Bilson on keyboard music; and many more). [Performers bolded]

A couple of useful hubsites are Todd McComb's and Brad Leissa's
http://www.classical.net/music/links/emusic.html

All the above should keep you busy for an hour or so . . . .

[Heck148]

count me in....

[diegobueno]

At an earlier stage in my life I enjoyed playing the recorder, and some of my earliest attempts at composition were direct imitations of the Handel flute sonatas. I flipped when I first heard Machaut and fell in love with a recording, on the old Archiv label, of Perotin's Sederunt Principes (which I later found out had also made a profound impact on Steve Reich). When I got to Cornell I took seminars in medieval music from Andre Barbera and Don Randall, not because they were going to be of any professional use to me, but just for the pleasure of it. I learned how to decipher the modal notation of the Wolfenbüttel Codex and the di Vitrian notation of the Roman de Fauvel. Somehow this contributed to making me the musician I am now, though how I can't say.

If asked to name the most beautiful piece of music ever, I might nominate the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis.

[jbuck919]

At an earlier stage in my life I enjoyed playing the recorder, and some of my earliest attempts at composition were direct imitations of the Handel flute sonatas. I flipped when I first heard Machaut and fell in love with a recording, on the old Archiv label, of Perotin's Sederunt Principes (which I later found out had also made a profound impact on Steve Reich). When I got to Cornell I took seminars in medieval music from Andre Barbera and Don Randall, not because they were going to be of any professional use to me, but just for the pleasure of it. I learned how to decipher the modal notation of the Wolfenbüttel Codex and the di Vitrian notation of the Roman de Fauvel. Somehow this contributed to making me the musician I am now, though how I can't say.

If asked to name the most beautiful piece of music ever, I might nominate the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis.

Tallis is as great a composer as there was prior to the Baroque. I do have some difficulty understanding an interest in the four-voiced contrapuncti of Perotinus (only two survive), which are extremely weird and must always have sounded that way, and while the Machaut Mass is of immense historic importance, it is also a weirdo piece. For those who like such things, that is what they like, but IMO it is a mistake to put the primitive stuff in the same basket as Tallis, let alone Handel.

Nevertheless:

Sederunt principes et adversum me loquebantur, et iniqui persecuti sunt me: adjuva me, Domine Deus meus, quia servus tuus exercebatur in tuis justificationibus.


"Princes sat and spoke against me, and the evil ones persecuted me. Judge me, Oh God my God, for your servant is fulfilled in your justification."

--The Introit for the Mass of the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, celebrated since ancient times on December 26, the second day of Christmas.

[diegobueno]

Who said anything about putting them in the same basket?

They all do quite well in their own baskets.

[jbuck919]

Who said anything about putting them in the same basket?

You did, Mark, unless you devalue your own posts. BTW I didn't even know this was a post by you and thought it must be some neophyte. You should know better.

[diegobueno]

Neophytes don't learn modal or de vitrian notation, or compare variants in Machaut's source manuscripts.

What neophytes do is make grand pronouncements about their opinions as if they were objective fact.

Get it??

[Lance]

Oh my! This is very gratifying to see so . . . . er . . . this many.

Lance, you're just pulling my ears. I know you don't like anyone earlier than Schumann.

Actually, my dear, I am very steeped in to very early BAROQUE. Telemann is one of special my favs, too. There is much gorgeous music that is pre-Bach. So don't count me out entirely! Give me at least 1/2 a point!

[jbuck919]

Oh my! This is very gratifying to see so . . . . er . . . this many.

Lance, you're just pulling my ears. I know you don't like anyone earlier than Schumann.

Actually, my dear, I am very steeped in to very early BAROQUE. Telemann is one of special my favs, too. There is much gorgeous music that is pre-Bach. So don't count me out entirely! Give me at least 1/2 a point!

Telemann was a near-exact contemporary of Bach, a rival for his position in Leipzig (the preferred candidate in fact), and the godfather to one of his children. He is not an early anything, only an inferior one. Early Baroque means Monteverdi, and there is nothing of real importance between him and the great trio, Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti, all of whom were born in 1685.

[diegobueno]

Lance never called Telemann an early baroque composer, stupid.

He says "Telemann is one of my special favs, too (in addition to early baroque)

[jbuck919]

Lance never called Telemann an early baroque composer, stupid.

He says "Telemann is one of my special favs, too (in addition to early baroque)

It is true that Lance never called Telemann, [supposedly] an early Baroque composer, stupid. Sometimes we make these odd typos that even modern software can't catch, don't we, Mark?

[diegobueno]

No, only you. Your posts are such utter nonsense they must be typos from beginning to end.

[Chalkperson]

If asked to name the most beautiful piece of music ever, I might nominate the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis.

Close, but I have to disagree, John Sheppard, Medea Vitae in it's only recording, by the Tallis Scholars..

and then, in midst of life, we are in death...

I have hundreds, actually probably more like a thousand discs of Polyphony, nothing beats this...
and I am so impressed with the response to this thread, very gratifying, i'll do some recommending tomorrow...

[Chalkperson]

Telemann He is not an early anything, only an inferior one. Early Baroque means Monteverdi, and there is nothing of real importance between him and the great trio, Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti, all of whom were born in 1685.

WRONG!!! get a life!!!

[jbuck919]

No, only you. Your posts are such utter nonsense they must be typos from beginning to end.

Cut it out Mark. I trump you seven ways to Sunday. You will only get yourself banned if you insist on being purely insulting. There is no motivation for this, and frankly, you owe me an apology.

[diegobueno]

Quite the contrary.

[jbuck919]

Telemann He is not an early anything, only an inferior one. Early Baroque means Monteverdi, and there is nothing of real importance between him and the great trio, Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti, all of whom were born in 1685.

WRONG!!! get a life!!!

Where did that come from? What is the motivation for all the acrimony here? I know that there are composers of the middle Baroque who were artists at a certain level. I've posted on this many times. Vivaldi, Telemann, worth listening to to the point where I've posted in favor of having complete box sets even though that would mean some set of boxes. But they are not Bach, a composer who could if one wished it provide a lifetime of artistic listening fulfillment all by himself. And none of this has to do with EM, which is the subject of the sticky. The last EM composer of any importance was Palestrina or perhaps Lassus, who were very great indeed.. Baroque has nothing to do with it.

And Chalkie, don't send me pm's complimenting me about how much you've learned from me, and then publicly post something so imbecilic, simplistic, and insulting. I've done nothing to deserve that, or what Mark (Diegobueno) in his apparent altered state of consciousness has seen fit to post.

[diegobueno]

So John, you reserve for yourself the sole right to be insulting?

[Chalkperson]

And Chalkie, don't send me pm's complimenting me about how much you've learned from me, and then publicly post something so imbecilic, simplistic, and insulting. I've done nothing to deserve that, or what Mark (Diegobueno) in his apparent altered state of consciousness has seen fit to post.

I complemented you on your knowledge, what I had learned from you, and I stand by that, but you dismiss SO much music, in every area, because on the page you don't like it, or for some other intellectual reason based on YOUR idea of what is and what is not 'good', it can't just be Bach, Bach, Bach or Brahms, Brahms, Brahms, and i'm sorry but your negativity just got too much for me, just because you don't like something there is no reason to put everybody off all the time, the new posters don't know what's hit them...

And any way, Red Type, Explanation Marks, Large typeface, so what, you really weren't supposed to take it personally...

[Corlyss_D]

He is not an early anything, only an inferior one. Early Baroque means Monteverdi, and there is nothing of real importance between him and the great trio, Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti, all of whom were born in 1685.

Your list, as is so often the case, is way too exclusive, but it is your list.

Telemann was far from inferior. "Telemann was widely regarded as Germany's leading composer in the early and middle 18th century; his fluent command of melody and uncomplicated textures show him as an important link between the late Baroque and the new Classical style." - Martin Ruhnke, The New Grove. Notice it doesn't say, "but today he is considered a hack because he composed far too much music to be any good." You wouldn't be just the teensiest bit resentful because Telemann was a far more successful composer and far more widely known than Bach in their day, would you?

Telemann's fluent command of melody and uncomplicated textures, traits I fancy Handel's music shares, is why I will always prefer both of them to Bach, whose fascination with counterpoint vexes me beyond redemption.

There are also a lot of Baroque composers to enjoy between Monteverdi and the deaths of Bach and Handel, so why limit ones enjoyment just to the indisputable geniuses?

[Corlyss_D]

you really weren't supposed to take it personally...

Hard not to take such things personally, Chalkie. Didn't sound very jocular at the time . . . Small virtual commnity and all that . . . rather like St. Mary Meade, don't you know?

Geez! I can't even get a show of hands without a fight breaking out . . .

[Chalkperson]

Hard not to take such things personally, Chalkie. Didn't sound very jocular at the time . . . Small virtual commnity and all that . . . rather like St. Mary Meade, don't you know?

Geez! I can't even get a show of hands without a fight breaking out . . .

Sorry, point taken, won't do it again...i'll listen to nothing but John Rutter for a day as penance...

[arglebargle]

Well, if Giovanni Pandolfi counts as Early, I'm in. The Harmonia Mundi release "Complete Violin Sonatas" with Andrew Manze and Richard Egarr contains music which, to my entirely inexpert ear, sounds oddly ahead of its time in certain ways, somehow more free than the later baroque if that makes any sense - somewhat quirky, often fascinating, sometimes beautiful music.

[absinthe]

Good heavens, it's broken into argument already.

Well, I don't know if I fit this mini-mall, looking at some of the above thoughts. My interest lies with mostly lithurgical Renaissance music from about Dufay up to Lassus, Victoria et al. (Lesser interest in secular). I also like the settings they managed to rescue from the original Buranian songs but there are technical points that worry me.

For afficonados who can tune into UK BBC Radio 3, the late prom next Tuesday might interest them. The programme starts at 22.15 BST and comprises:

Striggio
...Motet 'Ecce beatam lucem' (8 mins)
Lassus
...Motet and Magnificat 'Aurora lucis rutilat' (11 mins)
Tallis
...Spem in alium (9 mins)
Striggio
...Mass 'Ecco si beato giorno' in 40 and 60 parts (first performance in modern times) (28 mins)

[Corlyss_D]

Sorry, point taken, won't do it again...i'll listen to nothing but John Rutter for a day as penance...

Ask John what your penance should be. I think Rutter is too good. I would make it Lutoslawski or Ligeti or Carter.

[Corlyss_D]

Well, if Giovanni Pandolfi counts as Early, I'm in. The Harmonia Mundi release "Complete Violin Sonatas" with Andrew Manze and Richard Egarr contains music which, to my entirely inexpert ear, sounds oddly ahead of its time in certain ways, somehow more free than the later baroque if that makes any sense - somewhat quirky, often fascinating, sometimes beautiful music.

Yeah, he qualifies. How do they stack up against the Biber?

My interest lies with mostly lithurgical Renaissance music from about Dufay up to Lassus, Victoria et al. (Lesser interest in secular). I also like the setting they managed to rescue from the original Buranian songs but there are technical issues that worry me.

Yeah, they qualify. I happen to prefer organum and secular music, especially Spanish. I know that wasn't even most of what was composed in those days that survives to this. The EM field is not limited to secular. Anything between 750 and 1750 qualifies.

What technical issues? The usual "invented virtually from wholecloth for every performing edition" issue? I.e., authenticity?

[absinthe]

My interest lies with mostly lithurgical Renaissance music from about Dufay up to Lassus, Victoria et al. (Lesser interest in secular). I also like the setting they managed to rescue from the original Buranian songs but there are technical issues that worry me.

What technical issues? The usual "invented virtually from wholecloth for every performing edition" issue? I.e., authenticity?

Something that's recently interestd me - how they've interpreted the tab. just how authentic are the settings I've heard...Only time (precious) and a little more study can answer...something I will do, however. I could level the same at the polyphonic era but enough scolarship has gone into that to convince me...I mean, the counterpoint works so...

[Corlyss_D]

My interest lies with mostly lithurgical Renaissance music from about Dufay up to Lassus, Victoria et al. (Lesser interest in secular). I also like the setting they managed to rescue from the original Buranian songs but there are technical issues that worry me.

What technical issues? The usual "invented virtually from wholecloth for every performing edition" issue? I.e., authenticity?

Something that's recently interestd me - how they've interpreted the tab. just how authentic are the settings I've heard...Only time (precious) and a little more study can answer...something I will do, however. I could level the same at the polyphonic era but enough scolarship has gone into that to convince me...I mean, the counterpoint works so...

Ooooo. Casting off into dangerous waters. . . . . Whom are you reading for guidance? What do you mean by "tab" - tablature?

[jbuck919]

Sorry, point taken, won't do it again...i'll listen to nothing but John Rutter for a day as penance...

Ask John what your penance should be. I think Rutter is too good. I would make it Lutoslawski or Ligeti or Carter.

Chalkie and I have kissed and made up in a pm, but if I didn't know he actually liked the Beatles, that would have been a nice consequence.

Now you don't have to over-react on the subject of Telemann, who should not have come up here in the first place. You know I like him. I just don't like him as I like Bach. This is not exactly an eccentric opinion.

[Lance]

Gee, and I like Patsy Cline AND Roy Orbison, and near as I know, I have ALL their recordings! [What will people think?!?!?] Both had "operatic" voices in many ways. It's is just a matter of where life's paths take certain performing artists.

[Corlyss_D]

http://www.millenniumofmusic.com/index.php

[arglebargle]

Well, if Giovanni Pandolfi counts as Early, I'm in. The Harmonia Mundi release "Complete Violin Sonatas" with Andrew Manze and Richard Egarr contains music which, to my entirely inexpert ear, sounds oddly ahead of its time in certain ways, somehow more free than the later baroque if that makes any sense - somewhat quirky, often fascinating, sometimes beautiful music.

Yeah, he qualifies. How do they stack up against the Biber?

The Biber Violin Sonatas, again to my uneducated ear, are certainly delightful but seem for whatever reason more conventional.

Here's another more interesting (to me at any rate) Virgin Veritas release: William Lawes - For Ye Violls. Consort Setts for 5 and 6 Viols and Organ - Ensemble de violes Fretwork / Paul Nicholson

[absinthe]

About the prom last night - big works. Striggio (whom I have never heard before) Lassus and Tallis.

The Tallis Scholars,
BBC Singers
His Majesty's Sackbutts and Cornetts.

Not too sure about this. Perhaps the Albert Hall just hasn't the acoustic for this music. But...I don't know...maybe someone can help here... I was offput by the plainsong bits being sung operatically...plenty of vibrato and the expressive weight of a Pavrotti-type voice. A few of the sopranos were a bit warbly too.

Ok, this is part of the style of the Tallis Scholars - they employ female trebles who vibrate. Some of the top line might have come from Puccini with the portamentos and wobbling. Perhaps it's just the choirs I've heard but this doesn't seem the norm.

As for the Striggio Mass, in the absence of details I'd guess it was 8 choirs/5 voices with extra splits. A nice work; first performance in 4 centuries. According to the historical intro it led to a demand that Tallis comes up with something just as good to show that we brits still had what it takes. I think Tallis did slightly better though some of the sonic possibilities were lost in the Alber Hall. Well worth the listen though!


Edit: Audio problems might be mine. It was a digital broadcast received though a television set-top-box.

[PJME]

Information:

Check out http://www.zefirotorna.be/. ( quite beautiful, actually)

Zefiro torna is an excellent group and will perform in Bruges in August & September at the "Musica antiqua Festival" (I'll be there!)
http://www.musica-antiqua.com/

Next week a new CD will be available "De fragilitate".
Piae cantiones from Turku cathedral/Finland (schoolsongs and religious songs ) The manuscript is dated 1582, but many songs are much older.


I heard a large fragment on the radio today. It's music that makes you smile - even if I found "the arrangement" a bit heavy...

[TheFlayinDutchmn]

Hey guys, count me in.. 've been breathing EM the past two months, I think it'll be my focus for the next year or so. I've been listening to harmonia episodes 'till the wee hours of the morning while rebuilding my engine, and I think I've concluded that I should be Catalonian. Btw, a lot of early Spanish music seems to be accompanied by a narration, it this some kind of style or genre I should be aware of? I can't seem to find anything about it.

Did someone mention something about a savall cd of caravaggio or something? Too perfect I say.

Cheers,
nick

[jbuck919]

Hey guys, count me in.. 've been breathing EM the past two months, I think it'll be my focus for the next year or so. I've been listening to harmonia episodes 'till the wee hours of the morning while rebuilding my engine, and I think I've concluded that I should be Catalonian. Btw, a lot of early Spanish music seems to be accompanied by a narration, it this some kind of style or genre I should be aware of? I can't seem to find anything about it.

Did someone mention something about a savall cd of caravaggio or something? Too perfect I say.

Cheers,
nick

Before this goes any further, Caravaggio was a great painter of the later renaissance/early baroque, a controversial character for a variety of reasons, but not a composer. You are evidently confusing him with the equally scandalous composer Gesualdo.

[PJME]

Hi, this is the CD Dutchman was looking for.
It got mixed reviews in France and Belgium. My newspaper called it : A pretentious amalgam of overscored pseudo flamenco & neo-Pärt...(Savall's own compositions).
Still, Savall made enough great recordings - so this one can be easily forgotten.
The link with Caravaggio can be found in the texts by Dominique Fernandez, a well known French gay writer who has an interest in the Baroque period and baroque opera. His "biography" of Porporino (Porporino, ou les mystères de Naples) I do hartily recommend.



Peter

[Corlyss_D]

Peter or Chalkie (who I think first recommended this disc),

What's the tie-in with Caravaggio?

[PJME]

I haven't heard the disc.

However, it is a co-operation between Savall and Fernandez. Fernandez -who got the Goncourt prize in 1982 for a book on Pasolini and the Médicis prize for Porporino- apparently share a passion for Caravaggio.

And from http://www.hbdirect.com/album_detail.php?pid=987852

Almost all the music has been written by Jordi Savall, including a number of compositions and improvisations based on arrangements of works by Gesualdo, Monteverdi and Trabaci.....
Lachrimae Caravaggio focuses on seven of the artist's most disturbing works, as selected by Fernandez. The deluxe, full color booklet includes Fernandez's probing commentary into each of the selected paintings. In turn, these works provided the inspiration for Savall's seven musical "stanzas," which form a kind of imaginary soundtrack to the artwork through which Savall and his musicians submerge the listener in a mysterious and enveloping world of sound.

It is a recent disc and available at CD Universe, Arkhiv etc.

Peter

[PJME]

And more (from l'Express 31 st July 2007): (freely translated..)
It all started in 2005 in Barcelona - where a Caravaggio retrospective was held. Jordi Savall organised some concerts in the Museum that illustrated the life of Caravaggio (1571-1610) using compositions by Monteverdi, Gesualdo etc.
Inspired by this experience, Jordi Savall wanted to compose music himself. "Caravaggio's oeuvre is "modern" and reflects an epoch in spiritual crisis. Like our time."

Then he started reading Dominique Fernandez' book on Caravaggio "La course à l'abime" (Running into the abyss..???there must be a better expresion)

Savall invited Fernandez to co-operate. The writer withheald 7 paintings, presented them and commented on them in the (extended & luxury) CD booklet.

[Corlyss_D]

Lachrimae Caravaggio focuses on seven of the artist's most disturbing works

I didn't realize the guy had such a colorful past until Robb's M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio came out. Simon Schama includes him in his series The Power of Art. I've seen all but a couple of the programs and the Caravaggio and Bernini are by far the most gripping, esp. the evocative music that accompanies them (Caravaggio credited to a Peter Salem and the Bernini which is uncredited but which appears to be a mix of Monteverdi madrigals and Handel opera arias by a countertenor, with maybe a Vivaldi thrown in at the credits).