 |  | As expected... and that's a good thing. |  |
If you know (and like) the work of John Dunstable, and if you know (and like) the performance skills of the Hilliard Ensemble, then you won't be disappointed in this re-issue disc. Nothing ground-breaking, no new insights, just a thoroughly professional and subtly impassioned performance of church music by one of England's most important early composers.
Nice recording, too, at a nice price.
February 15, 2008| | | Great 'otherworldly' music. but not enough of it. | |
To a musical omnivore like me, who finds something to like in virtually every genre and age, this particular CD is very good, but not quite great. The Hilliard Ensemble gives an excellent performance, as usual, but I don't find this as interesting listening as some of their other recordings. As classical CD's go, it is also just a bit shorter than expected, at about 54 minutes. The a capella performance of the Latin text is excellent, but just a bit monochromatic. I almost miss the effect other recordings give of recording in a great open space, literally ora figuratively in a Medieval cathedral. This is a fine price for a good recording, but I would not go out of my way to recommend it.
August 22, 2007Good choise and a great singing group.
Delivery instead took almost a month !!!
January 9, 2007| | | A capella mystical motets | |
The anonymous author of the liner notes emphasizes quite rightly the 'otherness' of this music, which he sees as more nearly related to non-Western and minimalistic music than to the music of the Renaissance or the Baroque. These isorhythmic motets by the English composer John Dunstable, who lived from approx. 1390 to 1453 and about whose biography very little is known, very definitely have their roots in the mediaeval period, despite certain developments towards modernity which made this composer famous throughout Europe (he is generally cited as having inspired Dufay). In most cases the individual voices sing not only differing melodies but also differing sacred lyrics, the melodies in no way reflecting the meaning of the sung text. This, obviously, makes listening, even when using the texts printed in the accompanying booklet, quite a difficult procedure. Most hearers will, for that reason, probably be satisfied with just listening to the beautifully intermingling male voices, dominated as usual with the Hilliards by the two countertenors, David James and Ashley Stafford, without trying to attend to the lyrics or even to the mysterious mathematical symbolism for which Dunstable is famous.
The engineering of the disc tends to promote this. The analogue recording was made at England's Boxgrove Abbey in 1982 and suffers somewhat from a certain amount of noise from the tapes as well as under the (presumably deliberately chosen) echoing church acoustics, which make exact listening even more difficult than it would have been anyway. But perhaps this is just what was intended: even in those days, the Hilliards had a tendency to 'mysticize', an aspect of their art which has, of course, grown with the years. Personally, I would have welcomed a recording of the clarity and quality of their Machault mass for Hyperion.
The fact that the Hilliards do without any instrumental accompaniment and sing a capella from start to finish is probably historically accurate and for my mind a big advantage, especially as I must emphasize that each individual singer here has perfect intonation and fits in to the whole beautifully. The repertoire value of the disc is absolutely unquestionable.
November 4, 2004It seems like the moment this CD was reissued it went out of stock. Hopefully, the label will be smart enough to issue more copies of this extraordinary recording. This is truly one of the best early music recordings ever made. It won the best early music recording award from Gramophone in 1984. The singing is spectacular, with the loudest praise going to David James and Paul Elliott whose high voices carry the most of the melody in these three- and four-part motets. Dunstable is a real melodist, the pieces collected here are beautiful beyond belief. Check your local CD store, you may still be able to find this CD. Be sure you find it!!!
May 30, 1999More reviews at Amazon.com ...
