Gothic Voices – The Dufay Spectacle (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:05 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records
In a pageant of versatility featuring France’s greatest pre-Renaissance composer we enter the world of a grand New Year’s Day wedding feast, full of optimism and vision, tempered by playful emotional hardship, the music teasingly exploring the relationship between both, solemnised with some of Guillaume Dufay’s greatest motets and a festive use of instruments to mark the splendour of the occasion. From this final flourish of the mediaeval era we hear in Dufay’s quintessential Burgundian virtuosity how its musical richness has reached the point when it is about to burst into the new artistry and ideas of the Renaissance.
The Dufay Spectacle celebrates this artist’s genius with an eclectic show of frolicking and passionate robustness, plaintive devotional ardour, now with slow, dark rhythms, now upbeat cascades of melody, and thrilling complex rhythms. As the central chanson rings out its New Year’s promise ce jour de l’an is indeed a day to celebrate.
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Gothic Voices & Andrew Lawrence-King – The Splendour of Florence with a Burgundian Resonance (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:27 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records
Following its Gramophone Editor’s Choice album Echoes of an Old Hall , Medieval expert Gothic Voices has recorded The Splendour of Florence , a collection of Franco-Flemish music that was found in or associated with Florence. Occupying pride of place, Dufay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores is widely thought to reflect the proportions of the newly completed dome of Florence cathedral, for which it was written at the cathedral’s consecration in 1436. The other works – by Franco-Flemish composers Ockeghem, Busnois, Tinctoris, van Ghizeghem and others – are taken from a couple of Florentine chansonniers, which in turn document the wide dissemination of their music in the thriving Tuscan city. This album thus showcases Florence in all its splendour and lavishness, a city that proved a creative magnet for the highly-skilled and inventive compositional work of the outstanding composers of the Burgundian tradition.
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