Byrd: Laudibus in sanctis: Selections from Cantiones Sacrae (1591) and Gradualia (1605) [Import]

William Byrd (Composer), Andrew Carwood (Conductor), The Cardinall's Musick (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: The Cardinall's Musick
• Conductor: Andrew Carwood
• Composer: William Byrd
• Audio CD (January 16, 2007)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Hyperion
• ASIN: B000JCDS0S
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,331 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Quis Est Homo?

2. Tribulatio Proxima Est

3. Apparebit In Finem

4. Salve Sancta Parens - Introit

5. Alleluia, Ave Maria/Virga Iesse - Alleluias

6. Beata Es, Virgo Maria - Offertory

7. Beata Viscera - Communion

8. Regina Caeli

9. Salve Regina

10. Fac Cum Servo Tuo

11. Ecce Quam Bonum

12. In Manus Tuas, Domine

13. Unam Petii A Domino

14. Visita Quaesumus, Domine

15. Domine, Exaudi Orationem Meam, Inclina

16. Laudibus In Sanctis

Customer Reviews

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Careful! This Review May Cost You Money!, December 4, 2009

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Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Byrd: Laudibus in sanctis: Selections from Cantiones Sacrae (1591) and Gradualia (1605) (Audio CD)

Beaucoup d'argent! Geld! Plata! Penga! Scudi! Because this innocuous CD is VOLUME TEN of The Cardinall's Musick recordings of the works of William Byrd (1539-1623). And it's good! Very good, far better than I expected, since I'm usually skeptical of choral recordings of polyphony. More voices may amount to grandeur in a live performance, in a grand old abbey, but on a CD more voices often merely mean more distortion and spattered attacks. The Cardinall's Musick, conducted by Andrew Carwood, is a chorus of four women and eight men, with the alto part shared by one woman and two countertenors, and with only one true bass. Honestly, that has never sounded promising to me, and I've ignored the group's recording for many years already. But my instincts were wrong. This bunch can sing with tight ensemble! Most of the compositions on this CD are five-part, and some of them sound like one-on-a-part even when they aren't. The tuning is glorious, the horizontal independence of expression is spellbinding, the polyphony is so transparent that you can hear all five lines distinctly, the recording technology is good enough to quell distortion and to give very fine directional separation of voices, and best of all, you can't "hear" the beat of the conductor's baton. If the other nine volumes are as good as this, I've just cost myself well over $100.00!!!

William Byrd's music is florid and passionate, closer in expressive affect to that of Johannes Ockeghem than to the Apollonian tranquillity of Josquin or Palestrina. That comparison - to the greatest of Renaissance polyphonists - puts Byrd in the company he deserves. Just as Ockeghem's music can sound improvisatory and Dionysian, Byrd's seems to crest above musical theory and rules of counterpoint, and to flow in every direction like a river of sound in flood. The composer's spiritual passion may have been fueled by his 'threatened' situation as a recusant Catholic in Elizabethan England. He was linked intimately with some of the leading Catholics of the times, several of whom were tried and imprisoned for treason or treasonous beliefs. Much of Byrd's music had to be published outside of England, and Byrd spent the better part of his life in rural isolation from the musical establishments of the Court and the major churches. The compositions on this CD come from Byrd's "Cantiones Sacrae" of 1591 or from his "Gradualia" of 1605, and thus represent Byrd at the peak of his development. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the variety of affect and tempo in this music; scholars give Byrd high marks for attuning his phrases to the texts he was setting, and even though rather few people today can comprehend Latin on hearing, the texts seem to carry meaning, emotional meaning at least, in Byrd's melodies.

Parting thought: "A Byrd in the cart is worth ten on the browser."