Josquin des Prez – Motets – Orlando Consort

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Classical music, Early music, Josquin des Prez, Orlando Consort

Purity and Grace

Here is music by Josquin des Prez, effortlessly rendered by the Orlando Consort

What particularly impresses is that the musical lines are extremely clear and unmuddied, the interweaving of vocal lines shimmer tightly. This is, due to the fact that the Orlandos choose to have only one person singing each line; the result is that it becomes possible, with concentration, to follow one voice whilst holding the whole.

Its rather like looking at a complicated, beautiful piece of multicoloured weaving, finding delight in viewing the harmoniousness of the whole, and shifting attention to each line of colour, looking at the pattern it individually makes. The listener is drawn in to a very active listening experience, rather than the passive washing over of sound.

Art reaches a high level when the participants are so much in control of their technique, and so much in tune with their material, that they make what they do seem utterly effortless, hiding the joins and structure of technique. The Orlandos sing this music as if it were the easiest, and most obvious thing to do, to reach perfection.

Josquin Desprez – Motets – Orlando Consort Amazon UK This has been reissued, more cheaply, but only as a CD so you can’t hear on mp3 Prettier cover too!
Josquin Desprez – Motets – Orlando Consort Amazon USA

Ockeghem: Requiem; Missa Fors Seulement

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Classical music, Early music, Music review, Ockeghem, sacred music, The Clerk's Group

Crystalline castles In The Air

This beautiful collection of music by Ockeghem
, Brumel and de la Rue is stunning.

For the first time, I can really see the close connection between music and maths. These pieces are composed of such close and weaving harmonies, that they seem to create a sacred geometry of sound space, constructing something almost architectural in its balance and perfectly poised tensions. Listening to this, its at times impossible to work out whether the music is rising or falling, expanding or diminishing and contracting, as it seems to perform those oppositions all at once.

Though I am particularly drawn to music which is suffused with a longing, which feels as if can never come to fruition or resolution, this music comes from a different place. The devotion and faith which created it seem totally secure. The musical lines seem always to be resolved, even as they move to resolution. There is such a sense of always renewing balance.

That’s the music itself, and then there is the combination of fluidity and control from The Clerk’s Group, an effortless, everflowing stream of voices, building this rare fantastical soundscape.

The whole CD is a delight, but track 4, Fors seulement l’attente, chanson for 3 voices, is a pinnacle of pinnacles

Pictures of Manuscript and Ockeghem from Wikimedia Commons
Ockeghem: Requiem; Missa Fors Seulement Amazon UK
Ockeghem: Requiem; Missa Fors Seulement Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Flood

Tags

Africa, Early music, Flood, Jocelyn Pook, Kathleen Ferrier, Music review, sacred music, Soundtrack, World music review

The weird, wonderful, Puckish Ms. Pook

Jocelyn Pook’s fascination with both the sacred early music traditions of Christianity, and the music of northern Africa, the nomadic tradition and Islamic influence, easily puts a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.

From the beginning track where ethereal female voices sing a choral Requiescat, she moves into something which opens out the horizons on the second track, with a vista of sandy deserts and nomadic camel riders, except that the strange beat, the synthesised soundscape behind the ululating female voices, suggest an almost other world, futuristic planet.

The fourth track, Oppenheimer, where the narrative voice at the beginning makes reference to Hindu devotional texts, Vishnu the destroyer, is apocalyptic. There is a harsh, windy soundscape which sounds like the end of the world has happened, through which weave and interweave prayerful music from Christianity and equally devotionally intense music of Arabic influence. It is almost like some final, terrible battle between major faiths, and at the end of things is harshness, and the beauty which mankind created (music) left to remind us of the devotion and the savagery of faiths.

Another track starts with the urban voices of children at play, and weaves the rich voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Winds Southerly with the small soprano female choir singing a Pie Jesu. Pook clashes worlds together in an utterly new, hypnotic way

I don’t know who is responsible for the primary female vocals on most of the tracks, the floated voice, but it is sublime!
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon UK
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon USA