Customer Reviews

The Best of the Renaissance

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those looking for a wonderful and truly awe-inspiring overview of sacred music of the Renaissance, I highly recommend this CD, with this proviso: You'll spend quite a bit more money and time than you ever planned on buying and listening to more and more Renaissance music.

This CD does a superb job of giving us bits and pieces of 200 years of music, spanning from the turn of the 15th century and Josquin Desprez to the very late Renaissance and Allegri's incomparable Miserere Me. The one reason to choose this CD over the Silver offering is the fact that this one contains 3 whole masses - Byrd, Josquin, and Palestrina; this allows for some delightful comparison of 3 masses composed at different times and under differing circumstances in this era.

Enough said - do yourself a favour and have a listen - you will not regret it!

If you are building a classical music library and want to find some good recordings of High Renaissance (16th Century) music, this is a good place to begin. The selections contain good samplings from many countries. The choir is wonderful to listen to. The amazing 40-part Spem in alium is worth the price of the CD alone. Unfortunately, the liner notes do not include translations of the songs, but even so, the CD is worth having.

When I recently played the first disk of this collection in the small bookstore/café where I work, a customer told me she had been trying to read but couldn't because she was so captivated by this CD's sublime music.

Although I am a sort of purist who hates when people say they listen to classical music just to relax, I find this CD set is perfect for inspiring reflection and relaxation. So, if you're looking for good music to relax to, this would be an excellent purchase.

The same goes if you're looking for some great Renaissance music. However, the term "Best of the Renaissance" may be a bit of a misnomer; the CD does not include a vast array of music from the said era. This collection is solely /a cappella/ music. Perhaps a more fitting title would be "The Best of Renaissance Choral Music." If you're looking for a broad sampling of music from this time period in one CD collection, this may not be for you. Nevertheless, if you want well performed choral music by some great composers, I recommend this CD to both Renaissance neophytes and aficionados without reservation.

This CD contains, to my knowledge, the best recorded performance of the sublime Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. There is a famous story of Mozart going to the Sistine Chapel to hear the Allegri Miserere when he was fourteen years old. After having heard it, he asked to see the score and was denied permission. He when to a second performance, and sat "as if in a trance" and returned to write out the piece from memory...making only two mistakes, which in fact turned out to be mistakes that the singers had made in the performance.

My only major complaint with the Tallis Scholars' impressive compilation "The Best of the Renaissance" is its name. The 2-CD set only includes sacred vocal polyphony from the High Renaissance (16th century). That means you get no chansons, no madrigals, no instrumental music of any sort. Perhaps even worse, composers before Josquin are ignored: there's no Dufay, no Binchois, no Ockeghem - nobody who worked primarily in the 15th century. These omissions suggest that the Tallis Scholars probably consider the pre-Josquin period as late Medieval, rather than early Renaissance.

Once you accept "The Best of the Renaissance" for what it is - "Best Sacred Vocal Music of the 16th Century" - you can better enjoy its remarkable assemblage of High Renaissance polyphony. The first disc in particular is quite astonishing. The Scholars lead off with their signature performance of Allegri's "Miserere" - actually a Baroque-era composition in Renaissance "learned style." The Scholars brilliantly convey the "call-and-response" effect of dual choirs through exquisitely crafted acoustics. Turn this one up, turn off the lights, close your eyes, and you're in the Sistine Chapel!

The Scholars follow "Miserere" with an equally impressive performance of a work by their namesake Thomas Tallis - the 40-voice motet "Spem in alium." If "Miserere" hasn't overwhelmed your senses, this one will.

Two virtuoso Mass cycles follow: William Byrd's "Mass for Five Voices" and Josquin's "Missa Pange lingua." The former conveys a sublime, otherworldly beauty, while the latter is a superior example of the style of pervasive imitation that Josquin and his contemporaries pioneered.

The selections on Disc One are so impressive that Disc Two disappoints by comparison. The second set is dominated by two composers I never quite warmed to: Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina. Gesualdo was better known for his chromatic, genre-busting madrigals. His "Tenebrae Responses for Holy Thursday" are by contrast quite pleasing, but it's odd to hear sacred music written by a man who killed his wife and her lover. Palestrina's music achieves a sort of static beauty, but lacks forward motion. His "Missa Papae Marcelli" allegedly "saved" sacred polyphony, but arguably watered down the genre in its attempt to appease papal demands for simpler music.

The highlight of Disc 2 is Josquin's lovely "Ave Maria," a motet that provides yet another example of the Franco-Flemish composer's mastery of canonic forms.

"The Best of the Renaissance" expertly compiles the Tallis Scholars' best performances. Those looking for a comprehensive overview of the music of the Renaissance should be aware of its limitations, however.

Many CDs bearing the title "the best of..." contain a hit or two and other works are there to fill the space in between without raising the costs too much. But not this one. Apart from the historically famous recording of Misere by the Tallis Scholars, the two CDs contain a number of other equally beautiful works, i.e. by the stunning and intriguing Gesualdo. Ceratinly good value.

The Best of the Renaissance is certainly worth buying if only for the amazing "Spem in Alium" by Thomas Tallis.Nevertheless, I do not share the boundless enthusiasm of other reviewers for this album.

To begin with, three Masses are featured on this album,two on the first cd. That is too much to my liking. And while the Mass Pange Lingua by Desprez is undoubtedly a wonderful piece, the other masses are not the best: the Mass for five voices by Byrd, while very beautiful, lacks the depth, emotion and intimacy of his Mass for three voices. The Missa Papae Marcelli by Palestrina is brilliant but nothing more than an academic exercise in virtuosity.

And I definitely do not appreciate Gesualdo's Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday. This is simply very mediocre music that nobody would care for if it did not sound modern in its cerebral ugliness and thereby flatter our infatuation with ourselves.

I recommend "The Essential Tallis Scholars" either instead of or in addition to "The Best of the Renaissance", depending on your pocket and interest for Renaissance choral music. I would also recommend O Magnum Mysterium by the Robert Shaw festival singers. Although only a third of that album is devoted to Renaissance music, the interpretation is so beautiful and spiritual that it is really worth having in your Renaissance music collection.

I bought this CD after hearing the first track, Allegri's Miserere. This is a must for the classical music collector. All the music is digital so the beautiful voices are pure and clear. This music could have dedicated me to the church. I keep wondering what people of that time thought when they heard this music for the first time.

Wau, buy it, don't think about anything else. Just by it and feel a very deep emotion a kind of espiritual becoming. It's one of the bests recordings about reinacence. Please sorry about my gramar but I'm not american. Try it. Maybe your going tu discover thisngs in yourself you havent realised.

I've had the King's College Choir performance of the Miserere for years before I came across this Tallis Scholar performance. The two performances are very different, of course. To wit: Tallis Scholars is a mixed choir, the King's College Choir is male; the Tallis Scholars are adults, King's College has boy and men singers. But between the two, it is the King's College Choir that gives the sublime performance of Allegri's Miserere. Everything in their performance is exquisitely perfect. The Best of the Renaissance is a wonderful sampler of music from the Renaissance Period, but if you're looking for the definitive recording of Allegri's Miserere, I suggest you get the King's College Choir.