Vox dilecti mei – Renaissance songs of love

Brumel, Antonine, Dall'Aquila, Marco, Desprez, Josquin, Lasso, Orlando di, Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, różni kompozytorzy, Ruffo, Vincenzo, Senfl, Ludwig, Spinacino, Francesco

Hofbauer, Ulrike, Motseri, Keren, The Modena Consort

PC 10289

The Song of Songs is one of the most beautiful texts of the Old Testament and has inspired musical settings by composers of all epochs. It is a wonderful oriental poem with unequivocally erotic passages and has been interpreted differently by various religions and traditions: in the Jewish tradition as God's love for Israel, amongst Christians as Christ's love for his church and, in medieval Books of Hours and other prayer books, as a song of praise to the Virgin Mary. • On the present recording, the Modena Consort combines Renaissance settings of the Song of Songs (by Josquin, Isaac, Senfl, Palestrina, Lasso and others) with the contemporary setting "wingert in der frühe" ("vineyard in the morning") by the Swiss composer Hans-Jürg Meier (*1964). Meier's work is for soprano, four Renaissance transverse flutes and lute. Aside from the Song of Songs, his text also refers to the Church of Santa Maria Formosa in Venice, the proportions of which it musically traces. • Songs of the Renaissance are alternated seamlessly with new songs: the two sopranos Ulrike Hofbauer and Keren Motseri interpret this programme with clarity and lightness; both have a light timbre that blends ideally with the sound of the Renaissance flutes.

CD x 1

Pan Classics

28/08/2013

7619990102897