Jan Schumacher - Serenade: Songs of Night and Love - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Jan Schumacher - Romantic Partsongs for Male Choir [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/01/2009

With the present recording Illuminans Tenebras hopes to shed new light on the music of Hildegard von Bingen, one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. The musical approach of the ensemble shows that the monophony in the songs of Hildegard von Bingen bears a striking resemblance with various basic Ottoman makamlar - Kurdî, Mahur, Ussak. Illuminans Tenebras places Hildegard's mystical sounds alongside impassioned Eastern improvisations and links 12th-century Christian mysticism with Sufism of the same period. The recording highlights the musical and spiritual elements that the two traditions have in common monodic melodies, improvisation, and ecstasy - music as a path to the divine.

Henry Purcell is one the key musical figures of the English early-Baroque era. The Ensemble La Fenice's first recording featuring English music of the 17th century. Jean Tubery, the Ensemble's founder, is renowned internationally for reviving the baroque Cornett (a slender, curved horn), an instrument much in use during the Medieval, Renaissance and into the Baroque eras. The Ensemble La Fenice's early-music repertoire spans more than two centuries of works from all over Europe.