# Renaissance motets (Dufay to Victoria)



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

What are your favorites?

I'd be happy to get some pointers, preferably specific motets rather than full sets or composers.

My top favorites so far:

Josquin - O Virgo virginum
Josquin - Salve regina (a 5)
Gombert - Media vita
Gombert - Lugebat David Absalon
Palestrina - Dominus Jesus (in qua nocte)
Victoria - Missa De profunctis (1605): Libera me

Dufay's late motets are completely unfamiliar to me right now, but I plan to remedy that ASAP as he's probably my favorite Renaissance composer on the basis of his three late cantus firmus masses.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Oh, shucks, there are a ton of them. But tossing a few off the top of my head:

William Byrd - Ave Verum Corpus. Particularly sung by Higgenbotham's group. 
Allegre's Miserere, of course. 
Thomas Weelkes, A remembrance of my friend Thomas Morley
Tallis' Spem in Alium


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Thanks! You can mention more if you want. I was simply limited by my own inexperience -- I usually need a score and more than one listen to judge a work so even when I've listened to something I've quite liked it doesn't necessarily make enough of an impression if I don't come back to it with a score. It's a slow process.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Try the following composer guest books

http://www.talkclassical.com/25665-john-browne.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/18110-william-byrd.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/10670-john-dowland.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/20304-orlando-gibbons.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/21021-william-lawes.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/18508-thomas-tallis.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/26355-john-taverner-1490-1545-a.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/23640-thomas-weelkes-1576-1623-a.html

Sorry about the British bias.

This thread http://www.talkclassical.com/20177-medieval-renaissance-music.html has some nice stuff


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

If you like Dufay, I would definitely recommend this CD of his isorhythmic motets:


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

I'm not sure the isorhytmic style is ideal for producing the kind of free flowing music that marks Dufay's later works. But I have that album and need to listen to more of it.


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## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

Here's a few more you might enjoy:

John Dunstable: 
Salve Scema Sanctitatis

Johannes Regis:
Celsitonantis Ave Genitrix
Lux Solemnis

Loyset Compere:
Omnium bonorum plena

Gaspar van Weerbecke:
Tota pulchra es

Heinrich Isaac:
Angeli Arcgangeli
Optime Pastor
Virgo Prudentissima
Tota pulchra es

Josquin:
O Virgo Prudentissima
Ut Phoebi Radiis
Qui habitat

Pierre de la Rue:
Salve mater salvatoris

Antoine Brumel:
Nati canunt omnia

Adrian Willaert:
Benedicta es
Creator omnium, Deus

Thomas Tallis:
Suspice, quaeso domine
In jejunio et fletu

Clemens non Papa:
Pater Peccavi

Palestrina:
Assumpta est Maria

Orlande de Lassus:
Surge propera amica mea

William Byrd:
Quomodo cantabimus
Laudate pueri dominum
Vigilate


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## Alypius (Jan 23, 2013)

Among my many and varied wanderings, one recent one has been the music -- especially, the motets -- of Josquin Desprez. Over Christmas, I purchased a batch of recent recordings. The finest collection of Josquin's motets that I've come across is by the Weser Renaissance Bremen, directed by Manfred Cordes:










This includes a batch of Josquin's finest:
*De profundis (Ps. 129)
*Miserere mei Deo (Ps. 50)
*In exitu Israel Egypto (Ps. 113)
*Memor esto verbis tui (Ps. 118)

In another of their recent recordings, Cordes and the Weser Renaissance did Josquin's early Missa 'Ave maris stella', but interspersed it with various motets.










Purists might be bothered by breaking up Josquin's Mass that way, but since we are not attending an actual liturgical service, it seems legitimate to me. Besides Mass parts are the "ordinary", and other variable readings that could have been performed would have legitimately been interspersed. In any case, this recording has several other extraordinary Josquin compositions:

*Alma redemptoris mater
*Illibata Dei virgo nutrix
*Salve regina

I'll post others later.


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

These are my time-tested and proven favorite motets -- no fleeting favorites or passing fads or trendy motets du jour here ...

John DUNSTAPLE: _Salve scema sanctitatis_ • Orlando Consort [HM]
John DUNSTAPLE: _Veni sancte spiritus_ • Hilliard Ensemble [EMI]
Leonel POWER: _Anima mea liquefacta_ • Stimmwerck [Aeolus]
Guillaume DUFAY: _Flos florum_ • Turner/Pro Cantione Antiqua [Archiv] or Blue Heron [Blue Heron]
Guillaume DUFAY: _Ecclesiae militantis_ • Orlando Consort [Metronome]
William CORNYSH: _Ave Maria, mater Dei_ • Phillips/Tallis Scholars [Gimell]
John PLUMMER: _Anna mater matris Christi_ • Hilliard Ensemble [HM]
Antoine BUSNOIS: _Gaude coelestis Domina_ • Kirkman/Binchois Consort [Hyperion]
John BROWNE: _Stabat Mater_ • Phillips/Tallis Scholars [Gimell]
Heinrich ISAAC: _Quis dabit capiti meo aquam_ • Turner/Pro Cantione Antiqua [Archiv]
Heinrich ISAAC: _Tota pulchra es_ • Hilliard Ensemble [Hyperion]
JOSQUIN des Prez: _Inviolata, integra et casta_ à 5 • Orlando Consort [Archiv]
JOSQUIN des Prez: _Miserere mei, Deus_ • Testolin/De labyrintho [Stradivarius]
Antoine BRUMEL: _Ave virgo gloriosa_ • Hilliard Ensemble [Coro]
Jean MOUTON: _Nesciens mater_ • Ring Ensemble [Alba]
Jacobus CLEMENS non Papa: _Ego flos campi_ • Turner/Pro Cantione Antiqua [Archiv]
Rodrigo de CEBALLOS: _Hortus conclusus_ • Turner/Pro Cantione Antiqua [Teldec]
Francisco GUERRERO: _Ave virgo sanctissima_ • Turner/Pro Cantione Antiqua [Teldec]
Orlande de LASSUS: _Tristis est anima mea_ • Schrems/Regensburger Domchor [Archiv] or Rice/Brabant Consort [Hyperion] or Singer Pur [Ars Musici]
Thomas TALLIS: _Spem in alium_ • Phillips/Tallis Scholars [Gimell]
Thomas TALLIS: _Miserere nostri_ • Skinner/Alamire [Obsidian]
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA: _Quam pulchri sunt gressus tui_ • Turner/Pro Cantione Antiqua [Teldec]
William BYRD: _Ne irascaris Domine … Civitas sancti tui_ • Hilliard Ensemble [Hyperion]


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

I adore a Byrd motet called Laudate pueri. Sadly it's not very well known - probably because there's nowhere to breathe in it!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Winterreisender said:


> If you like Dufay, I would definitely recommend this CD of his isorhythmic motets:
> 
> View attachment 43814


I second this. I love this recording and these works!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Alypius mentioned and I want to second with emphasis Josquin's _De profundis clamavi_.

Victoria's _O Magnum mysterium_ is good too.


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## Alypius (Jan 23, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> Dufay's late motets are completely unfamiliar to me right now, but I plan to remedy that ASAP as he's probably my favorite Renaissance composer on the basis of his three late cantus firmus masses.


The best DuFay collection that I own is one mentioned earlier by Dirge:

*Blue Heron, Guillaume DuFay: Motets, Hymns, Chansons (Blue Heron, 2007)*










It's more chansons than motets, but overall is excellent. For a review, let quote one of the most savvy reviewers on Amazon. He goes by the sobriquet Giordano Bruno, and offer some of the sharpest-ear-ed and most knowledgeable reviews that I've run across there. He is a specialist in medieval and Renaissance music. Here's his comments on DuFay and on this recording.



> "... on November 27, 1474, a canon of the cathedral of Cambrai, a man in his seventies, died and left a bequest for the performance of music at his death bed and for the support of worthy acolytes in the schola cantorum. That man was Guillaume Dufay, born circa 1387, himself once a choir boy in Brussels but since then an internationally famous composer employed on honorific terms by the mighty of the ecclesiastical and secular courts. Dufay was unquestionably acclaimed - revered - as a composer in his own lifetime, but his bequest was unfulfilled and his compositions utterly forgotten. It's quite probable that not a single bar of Dufay's music was heard aloud from the middle of the 16th Century to the middle of the 20th....
> 
> Dufay was as sublime a composer as Josquin, Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, as any who has ever lived. But his musical forces were tiny, nothing close to a symphonic orchestra, just a few human voices and a handful of bowed or plucked string instruments. Nearly all his music was written in three or four lines of polyphony, to be sung one-or-two on a part. His texts were either sacred poetry, from the Psalms and the most venerable Latin rites, or else highly stylized courtly love stanzas in French. There were a few occasions, mostly in Italy, on which his music might have been sung by larger choirs, possibly doubled or decorated by instruments, but those occasions were effectively irrelevant to his compositional intentions. His music has survived in scattered parchment manuscripts from the nooks and crannies of Europe; it's taken several generations of modern musicological scholarship to assemble, edit, explicate it, and turn it over to performers. And it's taken several generations for the performers to relearn, chiefly by trial and error, what to do with it ...
> 
> ...


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

I've read a lot of reviews by Bruno, so I was already familiar as well as interested in his views.

I haven't been able to listen to most of the recommended pieces yet. The Huelgas Ensemble Dufay album is very nice. I've listened to pieces from it now and then recently. I have some of the Josquin recommended but don't have the sheet music so I'm kind of lacking motivation to get to know them properly. Some of the other recommendations I've not found particularly interesting, but I'll keep checking out the others over the next few months.

Thanks to those that have recommended pieces. It's nice to see there is at least some interest here in this sort of music.


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## rbrent (Jul 15, 2014)

There are so many little known gems out there - this for example, 




Spem of course - 



... and the Miserere -


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## Rameau (Jul 21, 2014)

Byrd: Laudate pueri Dominum
de Machaut: Quant et Moy
Perotin: Viderunt Omnes
Tallis: O Salutaris Hostis


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

The "Sound and the Fury" recording of Gombert's "Ergo ne vitae" is incredible. So much better than the recording by Brabant Ensemble. This is on the SF's third Gombert album, which is still available at the publisher's (ORF) website. 

I've read that their first Gombert album suffers more from intonation issues than this or the second one. I managed to acquire the second one recently but haven't received it yet. If you have a good sound system these "Sound and the Fury" albums are some of the best sounding Renaissance albums around and they're one voice per part (the quality varies a bit though, but this third Gombert album in particular is exceptional).


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