Customer Reviews

A Hilliard Songbook: New Music for Voices

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This is a fantastic collection of songs performed by one of the world's most revered vocal ensembles. All of the pieces demand exceptional skill, and many of them are based on a style of music which may be described as traditionally religious. To my ear, some of the pieces resemble medieval music of 12th century Paris. As an introduction, Gordon Jones, baritone, briefly explains how the ensemble received the compositions. All but four of the pieces were written for the Hilliard Ensemble. Those which were not (Feldman, Finnissy, Pärt) "are here simply because of their own particular qualities, musical, textural or rhetorical, and because they have all featured in our recent concert programmes." Each of the pieces has a short paragraph or two describing the work. Many of these are written by the composers themselves and they are immensely valuable in their explanations. I enjoy the Morton Feldman piece. It is a small setting for solo voice of Sonnet XXII from the Sonette an Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) written when Feldman was 21 representing his earliest published work. If you are intersted in exceptional vocal music, a cross-section of twentieth century vocal compositions or in music which is peaceful and reflective, this CD will be interesting to you.

'A Hilliard Songbook' or 'New Music for Voices' fills out a niche which Gordon Jones, the author of the notes for the album, states can be pretty barren of new works. I was especially happy to discover this album since Stanley Kubrick created in me a taste for modern choral music by his using several modern choral works in his epochal film, '2001'.

Especially for anyone fond of men's choirs and have had their fill of medieval polyphony, Bach cantatas, and recordings of the Red Army choir, these pieces are especially welcome. Like several of the pieces in '2001', they are most distinctive in using the human voice more like a most versatile of musical instruments than older works.

As some of the pieces were commissioned by The Hilliard Ensemble, they may be found nowhere else. So, in a world with very few good Arvo Part and other modern choral music, this recording is a real find!

... excepting "Un coup de des" by Barry Guy, the contempoprary pieces commissioned by this group sound less "modern" than the medieval music usually presented in other CDs by the same singers.