# Marcel Pérè`s Ensemble Organum what a sound I say pure genious I quote & endorse!



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

Ha!!! Sir or madam of taste looking for ancient lore music? done at it's best to try ensemble organum, there fabulous newbies, the purity of vocal, the sound overall is majestic, I'm listening to a great recording, prestigious & noble, quintessential affirmative, mandatory credential listening, you will love the I.e swear to god.

Compostela Vesperas Sancti Jacobi 

What a super sublime album, just as great as his Antoine de Févins album or Mozarabic Chants.

Any fans of Ensemble Organum here, what you uttermost awesome release by them?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A series of five interviews with Marcel Pérès here

https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/les-grands-entretiens/marcel-peres-musicologue-1-5-66174
https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/les-grands-entretiens/marcel-peres-musicologue-2-5-66353
https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/les-grands-entretiens/marcel-peres-musicologue-3-5-66209
https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/les-grands-entretiens/marcel-peres-musicologue-4-5-66305
https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/les-grands-entretiens/marcel-peres-musicologue-5-5-66272

I think that he's one of the great forces in early music over the past few decades, thanks to him we understand much better the regional diversity of chant, how local singing styles form a major part of chant. Most importantly, he has explored more than anyone before how medieval chant has its roots in oriental, Byzantine, singing. This brings two new things. First, a warm colourful singing style. And second, the most important thing for me, a sense of strangeness. _Dépaysement_.

There was a rerelease planned of most of his recordings for this year, as well as the release of a new recording of music from Morocco. However I believe that the sales of the first few rereleased CDs were so disappointing that the project has been put on the back boiler.

He's still active with courses, he's one of the groups I'd love to see in concert but recitals not part of workshops seem pretty rare and when they do happen, they happen in inaccessible parts of la France profonde.

Impossible to choose a best recording, they are all major major accomplishments. I'm particularly fond of the ones he made with Lycourgos Angelopoulo, Chant de l'église de Rome, for example.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Pérès has written a couple of books by the way, _Le Chant de la Mémoir_ and _Les Voix du Plainchant_ I've never read them but I've just made an order!







.








On the book on plainchant, the blurb is quite revealing



> Cet essai, fruit d'une rencontre entre un musicien et un ethnologue, souligne l'impossibilité de réduire aujourd'hui le chant d'église au seul chant grégorien, tel qu'il a été consigné au XIXe siècle dans le modèle solesmien. En effet, la philosophie de restauration qui présidait à l'élaboration de ce chant et voulait en faire une expression musicale exclusive à l'église catholique, l'a retranché de la modernité et peu à peu condamné. Partant, c'est toute la tradition des chantres qui a pu réapparaître à la fin du XXe siècle, depuis ses origines juive, grecque et romaine jusqu'aux plains-chants de l'époque baroque, en passant par les polyphonies médiévales et le chant mozarabe. Un art consommé de l'ornementation s'y révèle. Outre sa beauté intrinsèque, il pourrait aujourd'hui, hors de tout soupçon d'intégrisme ou de passéisme, contribuer au renouveau de l'art-lyrique et de la liturgie. Le disque joint au livre donne à entendre des extraits de vieux romain, et des chants de confréries corse et espagnole.


This isn't the first time that I've seen people in early music use strongly pejorative ideas like _intégrisme _to sully their opponents views. I myself have been part of discussions where we've likened certain quasi baroque ways of singing early renaissance music to colonialism

I suppose with early music we're right up against the other, _altérité_, just as the colonists were.


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

Brilliant thread thanks for turning me on to these artists. Just what I'm after at the moment!


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

I listened to Les Chants Des Templiers on YouTube and was completely blown away by the music. Does anyone here know where I can find more information about the Sepulchre manuscript?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's Peres' booklet essay, the Salve Regina on that CD is a fabulous thing!



> The chant of the templars: the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem in the twelfth century by Marcel Peres
> 
> It was towards the end of the second decade of the twelfth century that the idea of Hugh de Payns began to be realised: the creation of an Order of knighthood whose purpose was to guard the Holy Places and protect the many pilgrims who flocked to Jerusalem. In 1118 he obtained the assent of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Gormond de Picquigny. He gathered eight knights around him, and the undertaking was considered so important by Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, that he granted them the use of part of his palace, what was left of the ancient Temple of Solomon.
> 
> ...


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

Fascinating stuff, incredibly interesting. As someone who's been to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem it was an interesting listen. Many thanks for the notes you copied. I'm Keen to listen to the Compostela CD tomorrow.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

classical yorkist said:


> . I'm Keen to listen to the Compostela CD tomorrow.


That's a particularly astonishing recording. In the booklet (I can upload it if you want it) he says something which shows really clearly the relation between Marcel Peres and Bjorn Schmelzer



> Our work consisted in reviving the living traditions of religious singing with the aim of establishing the broken link between 'musical archaeology' (i.e. what we know from resear-ch) and the act of singing as it still exists, in Western Europe, in a few isolated places generally little known to the media. For singing is much more than just a combination of words and music. It is above all an act in which sound becomes an expression of memory - memory of a body immersed in the movement of on ancestral gesture.
> Marcel Peres


He says something which I find particularly inspiring, I think I'm much more interested in words than music and so any concept of music in performance which makes the meaning of the text the priority is something which appeals to me personally. Unforunately the English translation doesn't do justice to the French, I really don't feel like translating it . . . maybe Deprofundis will have a go (Allez deprofundis, bon courage)



> Les antiennes sont composees dans le style flamboyant des premieres decennies du Mr siecle. On sent se profiler, derriere l'architecture du discours musical, les proce-des de compositions qui trouveront des expressions diame-tralement opposees dans le chant cistercien et chez Hildegarde von Bingen (2). Ici la monodie se developpe dans une parfaite maitrise de la prosodie latine illustrant avec discretion et efficacite, dans la mouvance de la phrase, le poids des mots au travers desquels se deploie le sens. Cette musique avait de quoi plaire aux esprits de l'epoque quipou-vaient y voir 1 ultime aboutissement du discours religieux. C'etait une époque oil la creativite n'etait pas consider& a priori comme devant necessairement extirper les expressions heritees du passé, mais consistait plutot a exprimer, developper et magnifier la tradition.


Some indication of his battle against mainstream, Solesmes approved, chanting, can be gleaned from this remark



> This music is not easy to perform, even for specialists. One has to bear in mind information from various different fields: palaeography, metric (of the text end of the music), vocal and ritual aesthetics, the material conditions of performance (positioning of the singers, within the church and in relation to each other) - and also have a clear vision of the different relationships that could be built up between the vocal gesture and what was written down All of these are elements that, in the last analysis, can only be transmitted orally. Oral tradition died out almost completely among Catholics after the great reforms of the early twentieth century. A hundred years later, musicians seeking to revive this music still have difficulty in breaking free from the aesthetic canons established at that time, which brought about a radical change in the rhythmic and vocal approach to church singing. Where rhythm is concerned it was decreed (completely denying the evidence of history and tradi-tion) that plainchant could not have a regular beat, the latter being a sign of materiality, which was incompatible with the spiritual nature of such music. Formulated over a century ago, this sophism is still rife among performers of Gregorian 'chant today. As for the voices, all the vocal gestures that are used to express the interpreter's vitality - timbre, energy in the phonation, ornamentation (to bring out the dynamism of the phrase) - were deliberately dismissed from religious singing, suspected of expressing a non-spiritual materiality, conveying the singers' possible pride. Even today most musicians who perform medie-val music are still bound to those conceptions, without realising their origin.


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

The Compostela recording is a total mindblower, even more astonishing than the Templars. Thanks so much Mandryka for your info, I'm not sure I understand it all but what I do understand I agree with. I'm by no means an expert, so forgive me, but I've found the timbre in the voices extraordinary and I really appreciate the bottom drone that occurs. Also, there are some interesting dissonances (is that right?). I've found Ensemble Organum a much more challenging and rewarding listen than other religious chant I've heard. My bank balance is currently living in fear of the Amazon page of their CDs I have on display. I simply must listen further.


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

Confession: I really regret no longer having some Peres CDs I used to have... ugh... fortunately a few reissues are on Spotify... why doesn't HM just release a budget box - wouldn't that be ideal?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

philoctetes said:


> Confession: I really regret no longer having some Peres CDs I used to have... ugh... fortunately a few reissues are on Spotify... why doesn't HM just release a budget box - wouldn't that be ideal?


I think they intended to and there have been some rereleases but sales indicate that a full blown rerelease of the whole EO catalogue on CD wouldn't be profitable. The medium is at the end of its life. Anyway they're all obtainable easily enough either second hand or as downloads.


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