Posted on 03/19/2015 5:03:24 PM PDT by fatima
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Beautiful. Thanks.
I love music from that era. Thanks.
I've always viewed "Spring" as Greg's greatest achievement in music.
I grew up listening to 78's in an Italian household, so I'm used to all sorts of melancholic romantic music.
Thanks again.
One of the most underrated of Phil Collins’ Genesis songs.
Steely Dan - “Don’t Take me alive”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gV1sxB8TxI
Warren Zevon - “Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGhd53hV0Z0
ABBA - “One Of Us”
Engebert Humperdinck - “I Never Said Goodbye”
Kenny Rogers - “The Heart Of The Matter”
ooh - listening to it now -> very early version of Where To Now St. Peter right after it .... probably his best vocal tune ever.
Why oh why couldn't he have had some political sense?????
Fl
By the great High Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez -
A thousand regrets at deserting you
and leaving behind your loving face,
I feel so much sadness and such painful distress,
that it seems to me my days will soon dwindle away.
A bonus:
Pleine de dueil (full of sorrow).
This may be the prettiest thing I have heard in a long time. Wait for the cascading repetitions with the countertenor on "pour me reconforter."
Full of pain and sadness,
seeing that my suffering increases all the time,
and that in the end I cant bear it anymore,
Im constrained, in order to comfort myself,
to render the rest of my life to you.
I beg you and humbly ask,
for the pains that fill me,
never to leave me,
since Im yours for the rest of my life.
Thank you. That’s fascinating.
We have a choirmaster who is simply a genius. He knows all about this stuff. I had never even heard of Josquin . . .
A conductor was recording a work by Gabrielli in Venice's St Mark's Cathedral. Like so many pieces of the era, it was written in C. It didn't quite sound right, so on a hunch, recognizing that tone frequencies differed from city to city, he transposed it down to F. The result was that the cathedral turned into a sounding board, and the work resonated with the frequency of the building. He learned a lesson from that experience.
You'll see the older stuff (medieval and Renaissance) in modern editions in a variety of pitches, depending on who wrote it down.
Our choirmaster transposes to take advantage of our room (he says the room is the "extra singer" in the ensemble). You have to make adjustments because most American rooms do not have the advantage of 8 foot thick stone walls - which really kills your bass singers because siding just doesn't bounce low tones like thick stone walls do.
We're fortunate to have a very good room - the proportions are correct and although we don't have stone we have brick veneer over poured concrete. Chamber groups and touring singers are always trying to get the church for concerts.
And you notice the bouncing effect more in medieval and Renaissance music because it's written for small ensembles, not the "cast of thousands" that came in with the Romantics. This is a pic of the greatest composer of his day, Johannes Ockeghem (in the glasses), with his choir - all eight of them.
Josquin, by the way, wrote a lament ("deploration") on the death of Ockeghem, who was his master. It really is gorgeous, and the interesting thing is that Josquin pays homage not only with the words, but with the music, imitating some of Ockeghem's characteristic techniques - particularly in the bass lines. Ockeghem was the first to really take advantage of the lowest male voices in ensemble singing - he was noted himself for a very deep and resonant voice.
Deploration sur la mort Johannes Ockeghem ("Nymphes des bois")
Nymphs of the woods, and goddesses of the fountains,
skilled singers from all nations,
change your voices so clear and high into shrill cries and lamentations,
for Atropos, that great satrap,
has caught your Ockeghem in her trap,
[this is an attempt to catch the pun in French]
music's true treasure and masterpiece,
learned and handsome and by no means stout
it is great sorrow that earth must cover him.
Put on your mourning garments,
Josquin, Brumel, Pierchon, Compère, (all great composers)
and weep great tears from your eyes
you have lost your good father.
Grant to them eternal rest, O Lord,
and may perpetual light shine on them.
Cantus firmus: May he rest in peace. Amen.
When you are singing Renaissance polyphony, your part follows its own melodic line (no such thing as melody-over-chords in those days). Since it goes off on its own, you have to keep the shaping of your own line correct - a lot of us wind up using "body english" to keep it going.
Somebody on one of these videos referred to it as "early music Tai Chi". It really is, and it really works (at least for me).
Which is why choir lofts are in the back of the church. Nobody sees me gesticulating and shifting from foot to foot except the priest and the deacon.
Beautiful That strikes me as being in neither the major nor minor mode, but something more exotic like mixolydian.
I was wondering about that.
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