# Listening to early music: how and what to expect?



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

While the Boulez thread has taken a turn towards discussing _how _to listen to Boulez - or even all atonal music - (don't think too much) I am going through a parallel experience with "early" music (16th century and before). In the past I have tried and found much of it very beautiful but have never arrived at individual pieces standing out or being memorable. I guess if I listen again and again to a few pieces that something may happen in my mind that will represent it beginning to "talk to me". That is how a lot of fairly contemporary music became meaningful and rewarding to me. But I always found guides - fans of the music - to help me with the contemporary. There was an understanding that new music may be hard and challenging and lots of views about how to listen to it. I don't find the same with "early" music. It is not a question of what to listen to first so much what I should expect as a journey and an end result? Will I be humming it, will tunes or fragments (or whatever) be going around in my head? If you like early music, what has worked for you?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing not to underestimate with early music is how difficult it is to perform, what I mean is, the process of turning the manuscript into the sounds is fraught with uncertainties. In a way, that makes it an exciting area to explore because everything is experimental. Of course there will be some, maybe many, failed experiments on the way. Nevertheless the feeling of looking into a very lively arena of practical and theoretical investigation is rewarding if you’re that way inclined. 

My advice to people, especially now that, thanks to streaming, the music is so accessible, is to listen to everything until you find an approach you like, and then explore around that ensemble - find out their influences and who they influenced etc. I think that’s a better thing for me to say than just giving you a list of the sort of thing I like, though I’m perfectly happy to do that if you want.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

16th century is a big watershed because the advent of printing means that a lot more music survives. By the end of the 16th century you have music which is identifiably Baroque just as you have survivals of the older styles way into the 17th century.

Before printing, it's down to manuscript and they were expensive so ... not a lot of music survives. You get three basic types - church music, song both popular and courtly and dance - again both popular and courtly. It's a big area - we're looking at 500+ years whereas baroque to modern is just over 400 years and look at the amount of music there!

As to the journey, we started with David Munrow and a whole host of songs and dance tunes - Ecco La Primavera, the Agincourt Carol, L'homme armé - lots of music from the Henrician court. We also looked at basse dance, branles, brawls and estampies. Some great tunes there like the branle de Bourgogne.

If you get into church music, you need to look at the original plainchant as well as the polyphony. It was common to base masses on well known tunes e.g. Taverner's Westron Wynd Mass or several based on L'homme armé. So it helps to have some familiarity with the songs of the time.

Jordi Savall's catalogue includes a wide range of medieval folk music and is a good place to start.

Enjoy the journey.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

As also in modern music, it is better to be aware of the forms to appreciate the music better. Renaissance music uses a lot of polyphonic imitation. I just listen to the first line to hear the subject and enjoy the counterpoint and harmonies that comes when other voices come in. No need to fret over finding emotion, etc.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

In the case of a sacred work that employs a cantus firmus, I like to familiarize myself with the original source material, e.g. listening to the plainchant _Venit ad petrum_ before listening to the _Caput_ Masses of Ockeghem or Obrecht, or listening to the _L'homme armé_ song that provided the basis for all of those _L'homme armé_ Masses by Dufay, Josquin, Busnoys, Palestrina, etc.


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## Guest (Jan 7, 2019)

I've found that I do best when I approach a topic in a structured well-defined manner and thus I relentlessly do methodical research on any and all aspects of the subject matter.

I prefer to know where I'm at, where I've been, and most importantly of all - where I'm going.

I started here -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_music

and then moved on to -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_antiqua

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_nova

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_subtilior

and finally -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_music

This is a series of really quite good videos -

Early Music Sources - 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJOiqToQ7kiakqTLE7Hdd5g/videos


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Thank you to all for some interesting ideas and suggestions. The recommendation to study so as to better understand is not my way with music: I'm afraid I tend only to take an interest in music that I already like! Still some of the historical background in these posts is helpful and interesting. I would still like to hear any observations of the subjective experience of coming to know and enjoy pieces of early music if anyone is able to describe their inner experience.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eschbeg said:


> In the case of a sacred work that employs a cantus firmus, I like to familiarize myself with the original source material, e.g. listening to the plainchant _Venit ad petrum_ before listening to the _Caput_ Masses of Ockeghem or Obrecht, or listening to the _L'homme armé_ song that provided the basis for all of those _L'homme armé_ Masses by Dufay, Josquin, Busnoys, Palestrina, etc.


Sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand a word of it. This is a period, and these are forms, that are very new to me.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> One thing not to underestimate with early music is how difficult it is to perform, what I mean is, the process of turning the manuscript into the sounds is fraught with uncertainties. In a way, that makes it an exciting area to explore because everything is experimental. Of course there will be some, maybe many, failed experiments on the way. Nevertheless the feeling of looking into a very lively arena of practical and theoretical investigation is rewarding if you're that way inclined.
> 
> My advice to people, especially now that, thanks to streaming, the music is so accessible, is to listen to everything until you find an approach you like, and then explore around that ensemble - find out their influences and who they influenced etc. I think that's a better thing for me to say than just giving you a list of the sort of thing I like, though I'm perfectly happy to do that if you want.


Sounds like a practical approach. Lately I have really enjoyed a couple of CDs of the Binchois Ensemble and also of the Orlando Consort. Perhaps I'll explore these sources further. Thanks.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand a word of it. This is a period, and these are forms, that are very new to me.


What he means is that when composers wrote a mass, they often borrowed an original tune. L'homme armé has been used by a large number of composers from Josquin to Jenkins in the modern day. These are some time called parody masses (or imitation masses). Once you know how a mass works, it's useful to refer back to the original tune to see what the composer has done.
_
Cantus firmus_is simply an existing melody used as a base for polyphony. It was also used by Fux as a way of teaching species counterpoint in _Gradus ad Parnassum_.

There's a whole vocabulary involved but it's no more difficult than say sonata form.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Sounds like a practical approach. Lately I have really enjoyed a couple of CDs of the Binchois Ensemble and also of the Orlando Consort. Perhaps I'll explore these sources further. Thanks.


So Orlando are singing with all men and one voice per part, no instruments, I would check out some recordings from Gothic Voices and The Hilliard Ensemble and Sequentia too maybe. Which ones did you hear? Let me know and I may be able to suggest something very contrasting, I think it's best to get some experience of different conceptions of how to turn this sort of thing into music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand a word of it. This is a period, and these are forms, that are very new to me.


Sometimes in some polyphonic music there's a tune and a rhythm that gets tossed around and changed a bit, and it's was sometimes taken from a pop song or a bit of chant. I'd just forget all of that and lie back and enjoy the music.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

One thing that fascinates me about early music is the tuning. Music that existed prior to establishment of equal temperament or even well temperament. Stuff that uses, say, Pythagorean tuning. 

I remain suspicious of early music that sound too much "in tune". I automatically question its authenticity. I sort of like to cringe a bit at the melodies and harmonies of early music. It makes me feel more genuine.

I've experimented on my guitar with tunings that better apply to early lute tunes. Often I'll just kick a few of the strings "off kilter" (nothing scientific here) to hear what I can hear. I've also "sweetened" tunings on occasion, but that tends to keep one playing in a particular key since it "wolfs" the remaining keys. I have heard that the Beatle John Lennon used to slightly flatten the top E string of his guitar. (I've also heard that he flattened the D string just a smidge.) I suspect this is authoritative since Beatles music can well be considered "early music" any more here in the 21st century!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SONNET CLV said:


> One thing that fascinates me about early music is the tuning. Music that existed prior to establishment of equal temperament or even well temperament. Stuff that uses, say, Pythagorean tuning.


Yes, I agree with this. Which ensembles present the music with interesting and authentic tuning? Especially vocal ensembles.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> I would still like to hear any observations of the subjective experience of coming to know and enjoy pieces of early music if anyone is able to describe their inner experience.


As far as a subjective experience, I was attracted to early music, in particular sacred music, for its lack of concern for temporal drive. Music after the 1600s was interested in pushing to a point. Renaissance sacred music was more concerned with staying in the moment and letting the music/text unfold. Its concern was revelation (Ockegehem in particular). My first exposure was the Sanctus in Dufay's Mass for St. Anthony (Tower Records gave it free on a cassette), how it starts out with one word, Sanctus, and stretches it out over a long period of time. I discovered I wasn't thinking about chord progressions anymore (though there are modal progressions there); I was just thinking about what the word Sanctus means and discovering all how all the independent voices/melodies interacted together.

So having a chance to withdraw from the pressures of life - what was, what is, and what is to come - and just take time to dwell on the moment is what got me drawn into that era.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

We probably all respond to pre-Baroque music according to what qualities we enjoy in music generally. I love both the sensual aspect of Renaissance polyphony and the textural and sometimes rhythmic complexity it can attain. A sumptuous, multi-voice thing like Tallis's "Spem in alium" puts me in something like a hallucinogenic ecstasy (I can see St. Augustine frowning). I have the greatest admiration for the inventive genius and structural power of Josquin, and I'm enchanted by Brumel's way of animating his glowing walls of sonority with an almost crazy rhythmic interplay. Right now the Franco-Flemish school of the late 1400s and early 1500s seems to capture me most fully. I like much of Tallis's music, which is quite varied in style from rich polyphony to simple homophonic text-setting, and is always informed by earnest emotion. The Spanish and Portuguese polyphonists, with their somber minor tonality, I care for less, and the celebrated Palestrina seems much the same from work to work - boringly "perfect" - and generally leaves me cold. Early music can get to be rather same-old same-old.

It happens that I'm just now going through my Renaissance CDs with the intention of reducing the bulk of my collection. If anyone is in a collecting mode you might PM me and I'll make you an offer you can't refuse


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> Sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand a word of it. This is a period, and these are forms, that are very new to me.


All I would add to Taggart's post is that listening to a work with a cantus firmus is roughly analogous to being familiar with a jazz standard when listening to any particular interpretation of it. One of my favorite jazz tunes is Dave Brubeck's rendition of "Take the A Train," and part of what I like about it is how it differs from the Strayhorn classic. Knowledge of the Strayhorn is of course not required in order to enjoy the Brubeck, and if the Brubeck rendition weren't enjoyable in its own right then knowledge of the Strayhorn wouldn't be enough to salvage it; but knowing the Strayhorn does give me one more level on which to enjoy the Brubeck. I find that the same is true of medieval music and its reinterpretation at the hands of Renaissance composers: if I were not familiar with the 13th-century hymn _Pange lingua gloriosi_, I would still be able to appreciate Josquin's _Pange lingua_ Mass, composed some three centuries later but which uses the same tune, because the Mass is a beautiful work in its own right; but knowing the original melody does give me an additional thing to listen out for when I listen to the Josquin.


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## Bluecrab (Jun 24, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> Sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand a word of it.


You really don't have to... eschberg has given you quite a few suggestions of early music composers that you should find rewarding. I'm familiar with most of them (albeit superficially in most cases). Give them a listen. I doubt that you'll be disappointed.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> While the Boulez thread has taken a turn towards discussing _how _to listen to Boulez - or even all atonal music - (don't think too much) I am going through a parallel experience with "early" music (16th century and before). In the past I have tried and found much of it very beautiful but have never arrived at individual pieces standing out or being memorable. I guess if I listen again and again to a few pieces that something may happen in my mind that will represent it beginning to "talk to me". That is how a lot of fairly contemporary music became meaningful and rewarding to me. But I always found guides - fans of the music - to help me with the contemporary. There was an understanding that new music may be hard and challenging and lots of views about how to listen to it. I don't find the same with "early" music. It is not a question of what to listen to first so much what I should expect as a journey and an end result? Will I be humming it, will tunes or fragments (or whatever) be going around in my head? If you like early music, what has worked for you?


I think that there's a great danger that this post exaggerates the gap between early and more recent music. Why would someone who can handle listening to Schubert or Wolff not also enjoy a properly expressive performance of Walter von der Volgelweide or Neidhart von Reuental? Why would someone who enjoys Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven quartets also not enjoy Tye and Gibbons? Why would someone who enjoys the Bach cello suites not also enjoy Stoeffkens and Hume


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> So Orlando are singing with all men and one voice per part, no instruments, I would check out some recordings from Gothic Voices and The Hilliard Ensemble and Sequentia too maybe. Which ones did you hear? Let me know and I may be able to suggest something very contrasting, I think it's best to get some experience of different conceptions of how to turn this sort of thing into music.


The ones that have immediately appealed to me include these three

























Funny you should mention them but I am familiar with (and enjoy) the Hilliard's Machaut motets CD (and of course their Machaut-Holliger record) and Sequentia's Hildegard von Bingen (Ordo Virtutum). These probably represent all my most positive experiences with early music. It may be that it is the less human, less "eccentric" polyphonic stuff that I find more difficult to enjoy? Not that I do that well with viol consorts, either.

Edit - I have also enjoyed the CDs of Gibbon's keyboard music played on piano by Daniel-Ben Piennaar. I suppose that is early music, too.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> I think that there's a great danger that this post exaggerates the gap between early and more recent music. Why would someone who can handle listening to Schubert or Wolff not also enjoy a properly expressive performance of Walter von der Volgelweide or Neidhart von Reuental? Why would someone who enjoys Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven quartets also not enjoy Tye and Gibbons? Why would someone who enjoys the Bach cello suites not also enjoy Stoeffkens and Hume
> 
> View attachment 111438
> View attachment 111439
> ...


You are no doubt right. The gap is a personal one - a whole area of music that has mostly resisted my attempts at exploration so far. In my experience that doesn't mean that I won't eventually find a "way in". I will see what I can do to explore the discs you pictured - thanks.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

SONNET CLV said:


> One thing that fascinates me about early music is the tuning. Music that existed prior to establishment of equal temperament or even well temperament. Stuff that uses, say, Pythagorean tuning.
> 
> I remain suspicious of early music that sound too much "in tune". I automatically question its authenticity. I sort of like to cringe a bit at the melodies and harmonies of early music. It makes me feel more genuine.
> 
> I've experimented on my guitar with tunings that better apply to early lute tunes. Often I'll just kick a few of the strings "off kilter" (nothing scientific here) to hear what I can hear. I've also "sweetened" tunings on occasion, but that tends to keep one playing in a particular key since it "wolfs" the remaining keys. I have heard that the Beatle John Lennon used to slightly flatten the top E string of his guitar. (I've also heard that he flattened the D string just a smidge.) I suspect this is authoritative since Beatles music can well be considered "early music" any more here in the 21st century!


This sounds interesting - can you post a suggestion or two for where I can hear what you mean?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> The ones that have immediately appealed to me include these three
> 
> View attachment 111445
> 
> ...


Then I think you should now listen to a modern, informed and very contrasting approach to Machaut, Binchois and Dufay, just to see what you think. Try











































Enthusiast said:


> Funny you should mention them but I am familiar with (and enjoy) the Hilliard's Machaut motets CD (and of course their Machaut-Holliger record) and Sequentia's Hildegard von Bingen (Ordo Virtutum). These probably represent all my most positive experiences with early music. It may be that it is the less human, less "eccentric" polyphonic stuff that I find more difficult to enjoy? Not that I do that well with viol consorts, either.


Maybe you're more open to gothic music than renaissance music, Dufay may be the ideal composer for you, a sort of bridge.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> We probably all respond to pre-Baroque music according to what qualities we enjoy in music generally. I love both the sensual aspect of Renaissance polyphony and the textural and sometimes rhythmic complexity it can attain. A sumptuous, multi-voice thing like Tallis's "Spem in alium" puts me in something like a hallucinogenic ecstasy (I can see St. Augustine frowning). I have the greatest admiration for the inventive genius and structural power of Josquin, and I'm enchanted by Brumel's way of animating his glowing walls of sonority with an almost crazy rhythmic interplay. Right now the Franco-Flemish school of the late 1400s and early 1500s seems to capture me most fully. I like much of Tallis's music, which is quite varied in style from rich polyphony to simple homophonic text-setting, and is always informed by earnest emotion. The Spanish and Portuguese polyphonists, with their somber minor tonality, I care for less, and the celebrated Palestrina seems much the same from work to work - boringly "perfect" - and generally leaves me cold. Early music can get to be rather same-old same-old.
> 
> It happens that I'm just now going through my Renaissance CDs with the intention of reducing the bulk of my collection. If anyone is in a collecting mode you might PM me and I'll make you an offer you can't refuse


This may suggest a way through my polyphony difficulty - go for the less "perfect" ones - but I do know Spem in Alium, of course, and have not yet been given hallucinations by it. I can hear that it is amazing and I like it lots but ... is it that I lack a human dimension? - it doesn't draw me into listening to lots more. I do have a big Tallis sampler by the Tallis Scholars so I can give it another spin but usually I find myself a little bored after a few tracks. Perhaps that is how samplers are and to get the most from them you have to know the music already? In music more widely it has been the music that stands still that I have found most challenging.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> This sounds interesting - can you post a suggestion or two for where I can hear what you mean?


The later Hlilliard ensemble were one of the pioneers in exploring this. If you can get hold of the four live CDs they recorded in the 1990s, Perotin, Ockegham, Brumel and Dufay, for each one Rogers Covey-Crump contributed an essay on singing with pythagorian temperament.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Then I think you should now listen to a modern, informed and very contrasting approach to Machaut, Binchois and Dufay, just to see what you think. Try
> 
> View attachment 111464
> 
> ...


Thanks. I've listened to the first two but couldn't find the third without buying it. The instrumentals on the Tasto Solo disc were lovely but I didn't warm to the singing so much. It all sounded more sober that the discs I have been listening to. The Cappella Pratensis disc is lovely but I don't think I know any Dufay church music to compare it with. I will continue through them.

I note your saying that these are more modern and informed and I guess scholarship in this repertoire moves quite fast? Are the records I have been enjoying in some way discredited or "wrong"?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Thanks. I've listened to the first two but couldn't find the third without buying it. The instrumentals on the Tasto Solo disc were lovely but I didn't warm to the singing so much. It all sounded more sober that the discs I have been listening to. The Cappella Pratensis disc is lovely but I don't think I know any Dufay church music to compare it with. I will continue through them.
> 
> I note your saying that these are more modern and informed and I guess scholarship in this repertoire moves quite fast? Are the records I have been enjoying in some way discredited or "wrong"?


Did I say more modern and informed? I didn't mean to -- equally informed is what I meant to say. Apart maybe from the Clemencic, I'm not sure.

It's not that scholarship moves fast in this area, it's that the transferring the historical ideas into a performance takes time. So to give you a concrete example, when Christopher Page found that the untexted music in C13 manuscripts were, sometimes in some places, not performed by instruments but rather by singers singing vocalise, he wanted to try it out. But it took years and years of trial to make it into something that sounded like music -- just questions about which vowels and consonants to use, and how to make it line up with the other voices, took a lot of slow trial. And on top of that, there are questions of when to use this technique, rather than some other way of dealing with music without text in a motet.

And similar things for ideas about how to form the notes with the voice, the attacks. There are ideas that the notes shouldn't start off with an explosive attack, but finding the right sort of attack is a big project which might take an ensemble years and year of experimentation before they hit on a satisfying solution.

Same for singing enharmonics, embellishing the music with expressive accidentals, dealing with cross relations, the balance of vertical and horizontal, the flexibility of the rhythms, where and how to use instruments . . .


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Thanks. I've listened to the first two but couldn't find the third without buying it. The instrumentals on the Tasto Solo disc were lovely but I didn't warm to the singing so much. It all sounded more sober that the discs I have been listening to.


One interesting thing in that CD is the little organ. The singing seems to me a mixture of sad songs and happy songs, maybe reflecting the different temperaments of Dufay and Binchois. I saw them do that programme in concert and it was quite expressive. It's worth looking at what they say on their website about the organetto, which is an instrument which is causing a lot of interest at the moment, partly because an organ maker in Groningen has started to produce some good neo-medieval ones.



Enthusiast said:


> The Cappella Pratensis disc is lovely but I don't think I know any Dufay church music to compare it with. I will continue through them.


Capella Pratensis at this stage are totally original, don't confuse the style in that early recording with what they are doing now. Another ensemble who use a similar style is Ensemble Nusmido, and I have a theory, maybe a crazy one, so crazy that I've never dared share it -- it's that L'Acheron's Gibbons recording is similar in conception.

I'm a great fan of Rebecca Stewart, who was directing Capella Pratensis at the time of that recording (she made just four recordings with them as far as I know) Someone I know who worked with her once suggested that Marcel Peres (Ensemble Organum) have an approach which is in some ways sympathetic to her ideas, though I can't see it myself I'd say that what Peres does is always well worth exploring.

Shame you couldn't get hold of the Marc Mauillon/Pierre Hamon CD, or the Graindelavoix CD, they've got their own ideas too . . . You may find things on youtube by them. Both are pretty big movers and shakers in this little niche.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> I'm a great fan of Rebecca Stewart, who was directing Capella Pratensis at the time of that recording (she made just four recordings with them as far as I know) Someone I know who worked with her once suggested that Marcel Peres (Ensemble Organum) have an approach which is in some ways sympathetic to her ideas, though I can't see it myself I'd say that what Peres does is always well worth exploring.


Well, I did download their Ockeghem Missa Mi-mi which is cheap on Presto. I'm listening to it now and finding myself very drawn to it.

So many things to search out and hear thanks to all the recommendations!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> So many things to search out and hear thanks to all the recommendations!


Thanks for starting this thread. :tiphat:
It is indeed full of good things to listen to, so I've popped it on to a thread in the Early Music goup that we have here on TC - https://www.talkclassical.com/groups/early-birds.html


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Well, I did download their Ockeghem Missa Mi-mi which is cheap on Presto. I'm listening to it now and finding myself very drawn to it.
> 
> So many things to search out and hear thanks to all the recommendations!


If you can download let me know and I can let you have some unreleased recordings by her, and some rarities. When she quit Cappella Pratensis she formed her own organisation called Cantus Modalis -- they even made a recording of a mass by Heinrich Isaac. Cappella Pratensis are still very good, but they're not really like what they used to be.

In my opinion Graindelavoix is taking her approach into new places, for better or for worse.

By the way, today I listened with great pleasure to this chant CD -- Vellard has some new ideas about rhythms in monophony which he tries out to great effect here


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Ingélou said:


> Thanks for starting this thread. :tiphat:
> It is indeed full of good things to listen to, so I've popped it on to a thread in the Early Music goup that we have here on TC - https://www.talkclassical.com/groups/early-birds.html


Looks interesting but I couldn't see how to get to it except via this link.


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## SomeAustrianBloke (Nov 1, 2018)

I highly recommend the recordings by Marcel Pérès / Ensemble Organum. This ensemble got me interested in early music in the first place.


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

One "way in" to early music might be to perform it. Or to see others perform it - wielding the portative organ and the crumhorn.

As a lot of early and Renaissance music is vocal can you, for instance, sing several of the lines of "Draw on Sweet Night" (1609) to yourself as it plays?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ But not for me, I suspect. I couldn't play a note and my voice is merely OK! But, anyway, I have really moved a long way since starting this post and feel quite happy listening to - there have been so many recommendations and of course they are all linked to other possibilities. I do feel the music is now "talking to me" (meaning something to me, becoming memorable). I still have an endless journey but I am swimming now! I will occasionally post on early music if something makes me wonder or grabs my attention but in the meantime thanks to all for help and suggestions.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SomeAustrianBloke said:


> I highly recommend the recordings by Marcel Pérès / Ensemble Organum. This ensemble got me interested in early music in the first place.


What do you think of Bjorn Schmelzer?


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## SomeAustrianBloke (Nov 1, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> What do you think of Bjorn Schmelzer?


He has done some wonderful recordings, I just recently got the "Cypriotic Vespers", which I think are amazing.The first record I got was "de Rains Motetten", I believe 2 years ago. I really hope he visits Austria some day with Graindelavoix.

There's something magic listening to this kind of music, some special atmosphere modern music just can't deliver.


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