Tag: chant

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 63: Early Choral Music Special V

My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fifth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and sacred, with a little bit more of a Spanish focus this year. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm, and happy holidays!

Previous early choral music specials: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – O Pastor animarum (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. Tonus Peregrinus – Missa Da gaudiorum premia: Sanctus (John Dunstable)
3. La Capella Reial de Catalunya – Sibil·la Valenciana: Gloria Tibi Domine (Bartomeu Càrceres)
4. The Cambridge Singers – Justorum animae (Orlando de Lassus)
5. Anonymous 4 – Ave Maria gracia plena (Anonymous, 13th century France)
6. The Tallis Scholars – Funeral Motet: Versa est in luctum (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
7. Discantus – O rubor sanguinis [Antienne] (Hildegard von Bingen)
8. A Sei Voci – Messe Vidi Turbam Magnam: Graduel [Exaltent Eum] (Gregorio Allegri)
9. The Tallis Scholars – Osculetur me (Orlando de Lassus)
10. Capilla Flamenca – De profundis (Sebastián de Vivanco)
11. Ensemble Project Ars Nova – O gloriosissimi lux (Hildegard von Bingen)
12. The Tallis Scholars – Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
13. Anonymous 4 – Codex Calixtinus: Portum in ultimo (Anonymous, 12th century France)
14. Capilla Flamenca – Quae est ista (Sebastián de Vivanco)
15. The Tallis Scholars – Motet: Sicut lilium inter spinas (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
16. Discantus – Ave rosa novella (Anonymous, 13th century France)
17. Pro Cantione Antiqua – Missa Aeterna Christi munera: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 51: Early Choral Music Special IV

My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fourth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and mostly sacred, though I got a little wild and threw in a secular song from 16th century England. Also, to keep it extra spicy there’s some Hungarian and Bulgarian stuff in here too! I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too–if you do, you can download an mp3 version of it here. Stay warm!

Previous early choral music specials: 2020, 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – Kyrieleison (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. The Tallis Scholars – Qui venit (John Taverner)
3. Sequentia – Ora pro nobis, beate Nicolae (Anonymous, France)
4. Anonymous 4 – Motet: Puellare gremium / Purissima mater (Unknown composer, England)
5. Huelgas-Ensemble – Virgo sub ethereis (Alexander Agricola)
6. Anonymous 4 – Pia mater gratie (Anonymous, France)
7. Huelgas-Ensemble – Fortuna desperata (Alexander Agricola)
8. Sequentia – O Dulcis Electe (Responsory/To St. John The Evangelist) (Hildegard von Bingen)
9. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Miserere mei, Deus (excerpt) (Gregorio Allegri)
10. Theatre of Voices – Ve Mundo (Philip The Chancellor)
11. Anonymous 4 – Novum Decus Oritur (Unknown, Hungary)
12. Tonus Peregrinus – Quam Pulchra Est (John Dunstable)
13. The Tallis Scholars – Requiem: Taedet Animam Meam (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
14. Taverner Choir & Players – Westron Wynde (Anonymous, England)
15. Discantus – Vox in Rama (Unknown, France)
16. Tonus Peregrinus – Sanctus (John Dunstable)
17. Chamber Music Ensemble Kukuzel – Bulgarian Lament (excerpt) (Ioan Kukusel)
18. The Tallis Scholars – Dona nobis pacem (John Taverner)
19. Westminster Cathedral Choir – Sanctus (Missa Cantate) (John Sheppard)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 40: Early Choral Music Special III

This month for NTS Radio I put together a third volume of early Western vocal music. Completely acapella and largely sacred, though I went a little ~crazy~ this time and threw in a couple of courtly love motets. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Previous early choral music specials: 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Anonymous 4 – Peperit virgo (Unknown composer, England)
2. Huelgas-Ensemble – Apostolo glorioso (Guillaume Dufay)
3. The Gesualdo Six – Te lucis ante terminum (Thomas Tallis)
4. Anonymous 4 – Je te pri de cuer par amors (Unknown composer, France)
5. The Hilliard Ensemble – Sabbato Sancto: Responsorium 3 (Carlo Gesualdo)
6. Tonus Peregrinus – Credo: Da Gaudiorum Premia (John Dunstable)
7. Theatre of Voices – In hoc anni circulo (Unknown composer, France)
8. Tonus Peregrinus – Beata viscera (Pérotin)
9. The Hilliard Ensemble – Ave regina (Walter Frye)
10. Anonymous 4 – Quant je parti de m’amie (Unknown composer, France)
11. Ensemble Organum – Répons: Hodie nobis caelorum rex de virgi nasci (Unknown composer, France)
12. Sequentia – Nunc aperuit nobis (Hildegard von Bingen)
13. The Cambridge Singers – Libera nos, salva nos (John Shepperd)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 33

Here’s my newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. I was working on this as news was breaking about the fire at Notre Dame cathedral, so I was thinking a lot about sacred music and sacred spaces, but also about the hard lines we draw between devotional music and non-denominational music that still embodies some aspects of reverence for the divine, and what it means to enjoy music or other aesthetic remnants of religions that we don’t necessarily subscribe to or think are problematic. Some of this music is explicitly religious, and some of it isn’t. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 version here.

Tracklist:
1. Skin – Blood On Your Hands
2. Roberto Musci – Lidia After The Snow
3. Kenji Kawai – 謡II (Ghost City: Chant II)
4. Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses With Hector Zazou – Eramu In Campu
5. Sœur Marie Keyrouz – L’Apostikhon de l’Office de Mercredi Saint (Prière de Marie-Madeleine) “Ya Rabbi”…
6. Sainkho Namtchylak – Haragannig
7. David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir – Kyrie Opening
8. Dead Can Dance – Wilderness
9. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – カライ・モーメ (さあ行きましょう、娘さん)
10. Urszula Dudziak – Po Tamtej Stronie Gory
11. Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir – Kalimankou Denkou
12. Dead Can Dance – The Host Of Seraphim
13. Jocelyn Montgomery With David Lynch – Alleluia
14. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – Kleenex
15. Elena Ledda & Mauro Palmas – Sett’ispadas De Dolore

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 31: Early Choral Music Special II

This month for NTS Radio I put together a second volume of early Western vocal music (you can find the first volume, from last year, here). Technically some of this is toeing the line into the Baroque period. Completely  acapella and mostly sacred, though I think at least one of these songs are non-devotional love songs. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – Quia Ergo Femina Mortem Instruxit (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. Sequentia – Virga Lesse Floruit (Anonymous)
3. Anonymous 4 – Sequence, Stillat In Stellam Radium (Unknown, 14th c. England)
4. The Gesualdo Six – Tenebrae Factae Sunt (Carlo Gesualdo)
5. Sequentia – Per Partum Virginis (Anonymous, 15th c. Aquitania)
6. Emma Kirkby & The Consort Of Musicke – Luci Serene E Chiare (Claudio Monteverdi)
7. Cantica Symphonia – Juvenis Qui Puellam (Guillaume Dufay)
8. The Tallis Scholars – Versa Est In Luctum (Alonso Lobo)
9. Ensemble Organum – Deo Gratias (Anonymous, 12th c. Aquitania)
10. The King’s Singers – Tibi Laus, Tibi Gloria (Orlande de Lassus)
11. Red Byrd & Cappella Amsterdam – Magnus Liber Organi: Alleluya. Pascha Nostrum Immolatus Est  (Léonin)
12. The Hilliard Ensemble – Ave Regina (Walter Frye)
13. The Cambridge Singers – In Manus Tuas (John Shepperd)
14. The Tallis Scholars – Responsorium: Libera Me, Domine (Tomás Luis de Victoria)

Sequentia – Canticles of Ecstasy: Hildegard von Bingen, 1994

Another favorite collection of compositions by Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179), a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, poet, doctor, visionary, Christian mystic, and polymath. She founded the practice of scientific natural history in Germany, lived to the age of 81 at a time when the life expectancy was early 40s at best, and wrote the oldest surviving morality play (sometimes called the first musical drama). Despite having no formal musical training, she was responsible for some of the most hauntingly beautiful and enduring music to come out of medieval Catholicism. Her compositions broke many of the existing conventions of plainchant, using extremes of register, dramatic leaps of pitch, melismas and flourishes to express rhapsodic, overflowing emotion.

Canticles of Ecstasy is performed by the venerable early music ensemble Sequentia, who have been active since 1977 and are known for contributing original research about the music that they study and perform. While Feather on the Breath of God featured the organistrum (aka hurdy-gurdy) drone on several tracks, Canticles of Ecstasy also includes gorgeous medieval harp and medieval fiddle arrangements. It’s also exclusively female voices, both solo and ensemble (#nunsonly). It’s also…profoundly beautiful? And it’s an ideal too-cold-to-leave-the-house shut-in soundtrack.

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The Tallis Scholars – Victoria Requiem, 1987

This endless, drizzly winter has put me in a major early choral music rut, and it’s been so good that I almost don’t want the sun to come out. If you’ve never stomped around slushy Brooklyn subway stations in too many layers listening to this stuff in headphones, I’d highly recommend it–it’s a very easy way to lend some potent saintly gravitas to whatever you’re doing and thinking about, however trivial. Along the way, I’ve decided that Spanish Counter-Reformation composer and priest Tomás Luis de Victoria’s requiem, written in 1605, is one of my favorites.

I will say that because this was written right along the outer edges of what’s defined as “early music,” it shows a lot of early baroque tendencies, which is to say that it’s lacking the stark, alien-sounding movements of really early polyphony, like Pérotin. This Requiem is more along the lines of the traditional, baroque kind of prettiness that sounds pretty familiar to 2018 ears. I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing, but if you’re after more brutal, ascetic medievalism, this isn’t it. This is gorgeous, gut-wrenching, deeply pleasurable harmonies all the way. It’s remarkably versatile, too–if you want to make whatever you’re doing at home feel very important and beautiful (reading! writing! washing dishes! brushing your dog!), pop this on. You won’t regret it.

Note that the first ten tracks are Victoria’s Requiem in its entirety, and the last track,  “Versa Est In Iuctum,” was written by Alonso Lobo, one of Victoria’s contemporaries. For more early sacred choral music, including more work by always great Tallis Scholars, see here, here, here, here, and here.

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 20: Early Choral Music Special

Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. This one is comprised of entirely early Western vocal music (technically some of this is toeing the line into the Baroque period), completely a capella, and mostly sacred, though at least one of these songs is a non-devotional love song. I’ve listed the composer as the artist, and then the performers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Tracklist:
1. Hildegard von Bingen – O Lucidissima (Rosa Lamoreaux & Hesperus Ensemble)
2. Claudio Monteverdi – Ah Dolente Partita
(Emma Kirkby & The Consort of Musicke)
3. Pérotin – Plainchaint: Viderunt omnes fines terrae (Tonus Peregrinus)
4. Tomás Luis De Victoria – Kyrie (The Tallis Scholars)
5. Léonin – Viderunt Omnes, 2 Part Organum (Tonus Peregrinus)
6. Claudio Monteverdi – Donna, Nel Mo Ritorno (La Venexiana)
7. Unknown composer, 12th century Aquitanian monasteries –
Lux refulget (Sequentia)
8. Carlo Gesualdo – Sabbato Sancto, Responsorium 5 (The Hilliard Ensemble)
9. Walter Frye – O florens rosa (The Hilliard Ensemble)
10. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina – Motet Nigra Sum (The Tallis Scholars)
11. Pérotin – Beata viscera (The Hilliard Ensemble)
12. Unknown composer, 13th century England – Conductus:
O Maria stella maris (Anonymous 4)
13. Léonin – Pentecost: Repleti sunt omnes (Red Byrd)
14.Thomas Tallis – Spem in alium (Motet for 40 Voices) (The Tallis Scholars)

[Mix for Blowing Up The Workshop] #73

Honored to contribute a mix to Blowing Up The Workshop, which is a very useful archive of mixtapes including many from my own musical and curatorial heroes. I was thinking about escapism, cinematic déjà vu, anime soundtracks, hyper-optimistic fantasy about the experience of tourism, courtyards, commercials, and ruins as I put this together. If you like it, you can download it here. Thanks for listening!

Tracklist:
1. Jun Miyake – Good Morning Yamanashi
2. Giovanni Venosta – Woman In Late
3. Lena D’Água – Tao
4. Nuno Canavarro – Untitled 8
5. Forrest Fang – The Luminous Crowd
6. Einojuhani Rautavaara – Cantus Arcticus I: Melancholy
7. Kurban – Masto A Iran
8. Maria Marquez & Frank Harris – Canto Del Pilon
9. Iury Lech – Barreras
10. Marcel Pérès & Ensemble Organum – Offertoire “Diffusa Est Gratia In Labiis Tuis” (comp. Machaut)
11. Masami Tsuchiya – Never Mind
12. Pale Cocoon – Sora
13. Connie Francis – Siboney
14. Kenji Kawai – Nightstalker
15. Jansen / Barbieri – Breaking The Silence
16. Hiroko Yakushimaru – Tomeina Churippu

Claire Hamill – Voices, 1986

This blog started with the intention of sharing records that more people should hear, and I think that’s more the case for this record than any other thus far. It occupies a strange mid-point, both in visibility and in the context of the artist’s body of work. It’s been reprinted a handful of times, and its Discogs recommendations include acts as disparate and big-league as Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Tracy Chapman, and Prefab Sprout (begging the question, who exactly is listening to this record?). Claire Hamill debuted on Island Records, opened for Jethro Tull, and made several very big-budget albums. She dabbled in folk, synth pop, and electro before landing on Voices, which has been (somewhat confusingly) labeled as new age. It’s perhaps owing to that very difficulty in pinning her down or understanding her body of work that her work itself, with its dazzling high points, seems to have slipped through the cracks. We missed the trees for the forest.

But backing up: after an audition for Island founder Chris Blackwell, Hamill released her debut at seventeen, an impressive piece of folk that belied her age. It immediately drew comparisons to Joni Mitchell and was advertised in Time Out with the tagline “When most girls are frantically hunting husbands, starting work in Woolworths or learning to type, Claire has finished her first album.” (Happy International Women’s Day, by the way!) But despite her label’s high hopes for megastardom, her records continued to fall flat of large-scale acclaim. After a few more folk-rock efforts on a new label, Hamill ended up on CODA Records, Beggars Banquet’s “new age” imprint. She released Touchpaper, an ambitious electro-sophisti-pop record about which there are some great notes here, and then, while living in the English countryside married with a new baby–“a sweet time in my life”–decided to make a record using only her voice. Entirely self-written, self-produced, and featuring just a bit of synth and drum machine, Voices feels like a pared-down predecessor to Camille’s Le Fil. She uses her voice not just as a choir but as strings, as as keyboard, and as texture, all the while staying attentive to inclusions of inhales–they’re emphatic, but never oppressive. Songs like “Harvest,” which so clearly evokes a chorus of women reaping wheat, manage to worldlessly distill the bucolic ethos of what Aaron Copland needed an entire opera to do. Despite repetitive motifs and loops, nothing ever slogs. Everything moves.

What’s really shocking about a first listen, though, is how clearly you can hear threads leading directly to and from so many important artists. At the risk of sounding like the token music journalist who compares every female artist to every other female artist, you can explicitly hear the Celtic-tinged multi-tracking that Enya would go on to make a career out of, Kate Bush’s emotional fluency, a Cocteau Twins cavernous goth sensibility, Julia Holter’s polished baroque, Virginia Astley’s loving chronicle of the English countryside. Nothing folky, but totally pastoral. A (mostly) worldless spectrum of feeling. There are jewels to be found throughout Claire Hamill’s career, but Voices is her strongest, and perhaps most unsung, stroke of brilliance.

A note that while I always encourage you to buy records you love whenever possible, Claire has been personally funding her continued independent music-making, so if you love this as much as I do, please consider buying it!