Music for the 100 Years’ War: A Brief History in Music & Alabaster
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Label: Hyperion
Cat No: CDA68170
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 31st March 2017
Contents
Works
Sub Arturo plebs / Fons citharizancium / [In omnem terram]Anglia tibi turbidas
Ave miles
De flore martyrum
Deo gracias Anglia / The Agincourt carol
Ecce mitto angelum
Ianuam quam clauserat
Kyrie ... Domine miserere - Ab inimicis nostris
Opem nobis, o Thoma
Pastor cesus in gregis medio (plainchant)
Missa Da gaudiorum premia
Preco preheminenciae
Veni Sancte Spiritus
Ascendit Christus super celos
Gaude martyr
Gloria 'Ad Thome memoriam'
Artists
The Binchois ConsortConductor
Andrew KirkmanWorks
Sub Arturo plebs / Fons citharizancium / [In omnem terram]Anglia tibi turbidas
Ave miles
De flore martyrum
Deo gracias Anglia / The Agincourt carol
Ecce mitto angelum
Ianuam quam clauserat
Kyrie ... Domine miserere - Ab inimicis nostris
Opem nobis, o Thoma
Pastor cesus in gregis medio (plainchant)
Missa Da gaudiorum premia
Preco preheminenciae
Veni Sancte Spiritus
Ascendit Christus super celos
Gaude martyr
Gloria 'Ad Thome memoriam'
Artists
The Binchois ConsortConductor
Andrew KirkmanAbout
‘A festive, celebratory disc in many ways’ - Gramophone on CDA67868 (Music for Henry V & the House of Lancaster)
Europadisc Review
The handsome booklet includes not just detailed notes by Kirkman and musicologist Philip Weller, but gorgeous full-colour images of translucent English alabasters, many of them from the Castle Museum in Nottingham where the Binchois Consort undertook a residency at the time of the recording. Products of the English Midlands, that fed both domestic and export markets, they amplify and fill out the themes explored by the musical programme itself, helpfully organised into sections which focus on kingship and nationhood, national saints (Thomas and Edmund), and ceremonial rites of various kinds.
The music itself ranges from rousing early English carols (the splendid Anglia tibi turbidas and the famous Agincourt Carol) to exquisitely refined isorhythmic motets. It embraces two masterpieces of the first order from John Dunstaple, the motets Preco preheminencie and Veni Sancte Spiritus, as well as his Missa Da gaudiorum premia (its Kyrie completed by Weller) and two Mass movements by the slightly earlier but just as important Leonel Power, a Gloria and Credo on themes associated with Thomas Becket. If Dunstaple’s music is the main attraction here, it by no means overshadows the rest of the music – much of it anonymous – which is of the finest quality throughout. One such item is meltingly gentle Ascendit Christus super celos by the shadowy ‘Forest’ (a gifted composer of the early 15th century about whom precious little is known).
All the music displays aspects of the ‘Contenance Angloise’ that so fascinated Power’s and Dunstaple’s Continental contemporaries: the winning thirds and sixths of the harmonies, the graceful melodic shaping, and the formal inventiveness and innovation. To modern ears, it sounds surprisingly sweet for the period, and to contemporary ears it must have sounded positively opulent, akin perhaps to tasting a particularly fine dessert wine. All these properties and more are brought vividly to life by Kirkman and his singers, the music unerringly paced, the dynamic shading perfectly judged. In those works that invite a more forthright tones, the Binchois Consort’s upper voices take on a gleaming metallic hue that suggests (not inappropriately) polished steel.
All six singers (two male altos and four tenors) give their utmost throughout, accentuating the inbuilt exuberance of the music, which itself testifies to the self-confidence of a nation at the height of its powers. At a time when the nations of the United Kingdom are coming to terms with ‘Brexit’, this disc is a reminder of how the wheels of history, society and culture turned in an earlier era. A generation ago, the Gothic Voices’ disc of Hildegard of Bingen, A Feather on the Breath of God (also from the Hyperion label), was the disc of medieval music that graced collections otherwise devoid of such repertoire. Could it be that this very different collection of late medieval music will be another such genre-busting disc? It certainly deserves to be, for it is a tremendous and engrossingly imaginative achievement.
Reviews
The concentration of Dunstaple’s music is one of the disc’s high points, worth the price of admission on its own: the second section of the Kyrie in particular shows off the understated eloquence of both composer and ensemble.
Two other memorable aspects are worth mentioning; first the startling Latin pronunciation in the English medieval manner, which renders familiar texts virtually unrecognisable at times, and which The Binchois [Consort] carry off with no perceptible discomfort; second, the exquisite photographs of English alabaster carving that form a visual counterpart to the music recorded here. Each feature in its own way deepens one’s apprehension of the culture that gave rise to it. Fabrice Fitch
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