The Hilliard Ensemble

The Hilliard Ensemble – Dufay: Missa Se la face ay pale (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 32:09 minutes | 326 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © fra bernardo

Guillaume Dufay was undoubtedly the greatest musician of the fifteenth century. The Missa Se la Face ay Pale is the first of the four Great Masses of his maturity. While ushering in the Renaissance period, this work represents a culmination in the music of the Middle Ages.

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The Hilliard Ensemble – Il Cor Tristo (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:08 minutes | 890 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series

One of the world’s finest vocal chamber groups, the Hilliard Ensemble has a formidable reputation in the fields of both early and new music. The programme featured here exemplifies its distinctive style and highly developed musicianship in both repertoires. At its heart is a work commissioned by the ensemble from British contemporary composer Roger Marsh: Il Cor Tristo, a setting of cantos 32 and 33 from Dante’s Inferno, which deftly blends Renaissance techniques with a modern idiom. Marsh’s composition frames settings of Petrarch by 16th century composers Bernardo Pisano (1490-1548) and Jacques Arcadelt (c 1507-1568). As so often with the Hilliard singers, the transitions between “old” and “new” are seamless, and the album unfolds like a larger composition.

Here one must also credit composer Marsh, who notes that his “primary concern has been to keep Dante’s words clear at all times, and thus you will find in this contemporary music many devices more usually encountered in music of much earlier times.”

Marsh’s Il Cor Tristo was premiered by the Hilliard Ensemble in Perugia, Italy in September 2008. The version here was recorded, along with the Pisano and Arcadelt pieces, in November 2012, at the St Gerold monastery in Austria, location for outstanding Hilliard recordings including the collaborations with Jan Garbarek (Officium, Mnemosyne, Officium Novum) the Bach project with Christoph Poppen (Morimur), Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem Domine, as well as motets of Guillaume de Machaut, 16th century English music (Audivi Vocem) and more.
Il Cor Tristo is released as the Hilliards both celebrate their 40th anniversary and embark on their final year together: at the end of 2014 the group will disband. The Hilliards’ last year will be a creative summing-up. David Jones explains: “As well as all the music that we have discovered and enjoyed performing over the years, we want to embrace the important relationships and people that have contributed to some of the remarkable landmarks and turning points in our career”.

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