# Deprofundis revisited a secret labyrinth Paul van Nevel in all it's might & glory!!



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

*Deprofundis revisited a secret labyrinth Paul van Nevel in all it's might & glory!!*

Ahh... This box-set of 15cd in my digital library whit my decent speakers make it even better, im listening to thee music of Charles V court featuring Gombert probably best offering ever since Paul van Nevel is a great perfectionist ,meticuleous and devoted, i love this cd , the Manchicourt cd quite riveting straightfoward moving, but my favorite is Utophia Triumphant the utter best gem of the lot of album i presume ,nevertheless there all amazing albums, smart , genieous achivement, very incredible ,mind blowing, etherical beyond words, peerless perfection at work.

I heard he done a box-set for italian too iItalia Mia i wonder how it sound there some Pomponio Nenna?

Mister Paul van Nevel, your a brilliant man, and your ensemble tremendeously good .


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

In that box, I very much like Febus Avant (this was the recording which introduced me to Ars subtilior), and the Gombert . The Piplare motets are very rare and they're beautifully recorded.

The King James court CD is interesting, it got this review in Gramophone when it came out



> This is the oddest record I have heard in a long time. Paul van Nevel has always been a maverick, an unpredictable figure whose approach can seem, depending on your viewpoint, either astonishingly bold or thoroughly bizarre.
> For a few years now the idea has been floating round-apparently pioneered by Ephraim Segerman, a courageous figure who refuses to let subjective musical judgements cloud his pursuit of logic-that we perform all our medieval and renaissance music several times too fast. It's a theory based on surviving documents but hard to believe. Anyway, Paul van Nevel here tries it out. The ballade "Si doulcement me fait amours vrais amans lasts" over 19 minutes, when it would normally last about seven minutes; needless to say that the words are entirely lost, though some passing dissonances become wonderful, long-drawn out scrunches; it's a very strange piece anyway. Just a single stanza of the ballade Si doulchement mon ceur lasts nearly six minutes; and thank heavens he didn't record the other two stanzas, because he has also chosen to pitch it so extraordinarily low that even the formidable Harry van der Kamp cannot hold the notes steadily and even the nonpareil Marius van Altena fails to keep the line moving: the sound is to my ears thoroughly and irredeemably unpleasant.
> For the motet Personet armonia he chooses an ensemble of shawm and two trombones, but with a sopranino recorder doubling the tenor at the interval of two and a half octaves. Again, the theory of the thing seems easy to see, derived from organ registration; but organs are carefully balanced and good organists judge their registration by using their ears, which nobody seems to have done here (though I say 'seems' because the producer, Wolf Erichson, is probably the most experienced man in the business, world-wide).
> On the other hand, the Gloria and the Credo sound wonderful: lucid, flowing, well balanced and above all full of vital musicianship. One explanation might be that in these pieces Paul van Nevel had just slipped out for a drink and left the singers to get on with it; but, on balance, I suspect that he is reminding us that he really can produce a musical performance along more accepted lines. Strictly for die-hard enthusiasts, then, or for those intrigued by the far-out. DF


It's a relatively recent recording, and Nevel's later style seems very sensual to me - and very distinctively dreamy, like Tetraktys, Marc Mauillon, Ensemble Musica Nova, Graindelavoix . . . Did this way of playing early music really come out of research by Ephraim Segerman?

They've put the recording of vocal music by Costanzo Festa in the big Secret Labyrinth box, but this is a very unusual CD of his instrumental music, not in the box, which you may or may not like . . . there's only one way to tell!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I just want to add something. You can see from that box just how adventurous Van Nevel is. There’s like, nothing mainstream. No Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Machaut, apart from maybe the Lasso and the Brumel. It’s all absolutely top class music passionately performed and none of it well known even to people who are interested in early music, most of it hardly ever performed or recorded.


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