Customer Reviews

Praetorius - Mass for Christmas Morning

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If this is what music was like in the 1600's, we are all living in the wrong century! My eleven-year-old has started to hum tunes from this recording.

Paul McCreesh has reconstructed a Lutheran Mass for Christmas Morning as it might have been celebrated around 1620 using music by Praetorius, Scheidt and Schein. Performed in Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark with soloists, choirs, original instruments and organ, the music ranges from the most delicate (single boy soprano) to all stops pulled out. I have never heard anything like it. The lyrics are all in German and Latin, but good translations are in the notes. The music is unique (though some of the hymns are still common in Churches today). Performance is tightly controlled, and flawless. Dynamics go all the way from ppp to FFF, sometimes quite suddenly.

Some of the hymns alternate German and Latin verses. Evidently this was common in northern Germany back then. The last hymn, In Dulci Jubilo, (Good Christian Men Rejoice) will blow your socks off, and perhaps blow out your windows if you don't watch the volume control. Those 17th century Lutherans were really joyous on Christmas morning.

This is my favorite recording.

I wonder what kind of tool McCreesh used to conduct this performance? Was it a magic wand? No other of the 20+ CDs purchased lately has been able to produce such a riveting effect on me!

What McCreesh has done here is an imaginative reconstruction of a late Renaissance Mass, based mostly on collections by Praetorius (such as Polyhymnia caduceatrix et panegyrica, Musae Sioniae, Missodia Sionia, Urania, and the Puericinium), but also including some works of Samuel Scheidt, Johann Hermann Schein, and Lucas Osiander. And this compendium is performed with forces that combine the refined with the massive: The singers of the Gabrieli Consort include such "secret tip" names as Rodrigo del Pozo, while the choir forces range from a favoriti choir over a fine boychoir all the way to a massive choir built up by the already mentioned groups plus the congregational choir and several amateur choirs. All this is supported on period instruments, which include a chamber organ and the truly marvelous organ of Roskilde Cathedral, which is so authentic that it uses hand-blown bellows!

These ample forces are employed in a highly varied way. A solo treble (Anders Engberg-Pedersen) opens the performance with a faraway processional. Soon later, in the introit, the full choir sets the other end of the dynamics scale. In the gradual hymn each of its nine verses is performed with a different array: Baritone solo for the first, congregation and instruments with cathedral organ for the second, choirboys, strings and harpsichord for the third, and so on, until the last verse is performed with all hands, in twelve voices.

From the Puericinium, a collection of music for boy's voices, we get to hear the "Quem pastores laudavere", one of Praetorius' better known works, commonly referred to in Lutheran tradition as "the Quempas". Four trebles alternate with the full choir and ensemble in an enthusiastic rendering.

The magic keeps flowing for a full 79 minutes, until the apotheosic end, "In dulci jubilo", performed by five "choirs" which include everything from trebles to trumpets and drums.

This CD carries my highest level of recommendation, and is the newest addition to the "best of the best" list on my web site.

I bought this CD on the strength of the reviews posted at Amazon. I have several recordings of the Gabrieli Consort and Players but my choices have been exclusive to Venetian music. The music on this disc, the Lutheran Mass for Christmas Morning, is equally inventive and interesting as Italian music of the same period. Certainly, Lutheran services were as musical as those of Venice. This is due to Michael Praetorius.

As the disc begins, the Introit (Puer natus in Bethlehem) is a stunning example of Praetroius' versatility. The piece is scored for vast forces that include soloists, a choir, a boys choir, organ sackbuts, strings, harpsichord, records, shawms, cornett and harp. For this disc, Paul McCreesh has reconstructed a mass that might have been heard on a Christmas morning in the 1620s. Along with music by Praetorius, there are hymns by Martin Luther and instrumental works by Samuel Scheidt and Johann Herman Schein. There is a variety of music from plainchant, organ preludes, hymns sung by choirs wrapped around the traditional layout of the mass: Introit, Kyrie, the Gloria. The instrumental music is beautifully performed and the venue of this recording, the Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark, is simply superb.

If you are familiar with the recordings of the Gabrieli Consort, this disc will be a welcome addition to your collection. For people new to this period of music, I recommend they first heard "A Venetian Coronation." This award winning disc will acquaint new listeners to the group with an appealing mass centered on the coronation of the Doge.

This CD absolutely blew me away. It truly is a religious experience, and should do a lot for us church musicians who want to expand our repertoire into exciting but still traditional areas. The music is, well, heavenly. It still sounds as fresh, exciting and liberating as the day it went into the choir loft, and I can only imagine that worship like this was what really sent the Reformation raging through Europe even long after Luther was gone. For example, Praetorius' setting of the old Lutheran Sanctus "Isaiah the prophet": well, let's just say, when it gets to the line "and all the house was filled with billowing smoke", you just have stand up or you'll wet your pants, no joke. Paul McCreesh did a wonderful job of making this feel like you are sitting in church, not in a concert hall, and the worship experience leaves you hungry for more. It really feels like Christmas eve. Hey ELCA bishops, listen to this disc and learn a thing or two about what it REALLY means to be Lutheran...bring on the long blacks and ruffles, bring on the chorales, bring it all on, ELCA, and some of us Episcopalians of Scandinavian descent might just come back...

After about the 3rd or 4th time I listened to this, I was absolutely enchanted. Now, having heard it 30+ times, I still hear new beauty each time. Really magnificent. Jesus Christ is glorified in this masterpiece. I get the sense of deep joy of the Reformation, being transported to Germany circa 1620. The singers sing with all their might about the glory of God, the grace of Christ, and the beauty of holiness - as if Christ has come into plain view after centuries of distortion. Buy it, listen, and enjoy a taste of heaven.

This stunning recording is a must for any lover of sixteenth and seventeenth century music, or for any Lutheran. I have gotten much joy by listening again and again during Advent and Christmas.

That the name of Michael Praetorius is not well known should not be surprising, however many of the hymns which are common in our modern Christmas repertoire for Lutheran and other Christian services and which he composed or often harmonized are quite famous. We have just failed to link the name with the music.

Praetorius was a very prolific composer whose total catalogue amounts to over 1300 works successfully attributed to him. These works range from simple harmonizations of popular Lutheran chorales (which were monophonic) to sonatas to grandiose polychoral settings employing the cori spezzati (divided choirs) which was developed in Venice under notable composers like Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi. Praetorius emulated their styles and experimented with various instrumental and voice groupings for optimal acoustic effects. Praetorius also wrote a guide to how works of this grandiose nature should be performed in his very important musical treatise, Syntagma musicum which was wisely consulted by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli consort to render as accurate a production as possible.

Praetorius' contributions to the Lutheran service musically cannot be adequately realized. Though Luther himself was very committed to using music in the services, much of the detail was left to individual congregations. Prateorius' work had a great effect on other prominent Lutheran composers who sought to repeat what he did with his music at their respective courts. This is seen in the music of Hans Leo Hassler and Heinrich Schutz and all of this influence would culminate in two of the greatest composers of Lutheran Church music in the Baroque, Georg Philip Telemann and, most importantly, Johann Sebastian Bach.

The works in this particular recording reflect what a Lutheran mass might have sounded like at Christmas morning. The works are not part of one continuous "Lutheran Christmas Mass" but taken from different sources of Praetorius' total catalogue, mainly the Musae Sionae.

The performance is nothing short of brilliant. The Gabrieli Consort has outdone itself once again. The voices blend together wonderfully and are never overshadowed by the instrumental forces. Everyone did their homework. All together, for any music historian or music student or just someone who likes Christams Church Music, this is a must.

i have had this recording for several years now. its the first one of mccreesh's i bought. and i bought it based solely on the exceptional reviews given here on amazon (4 or 5 at the time). it is unarguably pointless to write a review now, but i am going to anyway ;o).

As if you needed any further encouragement to buy this record...i will agree with all the preceding raves. i dont even mind the rackets and crumhorns and shawms, etc. - adds character. i would like to highlight one track here against the others: Puer Natus in Bethlehem. This one never gets old. such tremendous energy and powerful joy. i honestly have to wonder about the structural integrity of Roskilde Cathedral after the performance of this one piece. Nowhere else in all of his recordings is McCreesh's unparalleled talent illustrated. His scholarship, arrangement, and interpretation of this piece is a rare treasure of this genre. Considering another comparison with the Roland Wilson on Sony Vivarte release, yes, McCreesh's effort clearly has first place. Back to the entire recording, other standouts include the opening chorale - one of the most exotic and grabbing harmonies you will ever hear, the Quempas (although the cathedral acoustics do rob some of the subtle harmonies that really make this piece), and the final hymn Puer Nobis Nascitur: simple, but, again, infectious and addictive expression of the highest joy. I would also echo a previous reviewer's comment about the Roskilde organ. The tone and sonic capabilities of this instrument are simply astonishing.

Again, this review is unnecessary so far as selling is concerned, but the work represented here deserves many more. Go ahead and pick this one up, and give it the place of honor in your entire collection.

I can only pile on to the other glowing reviews: this is a tour de force of choral and solo singing as well as instrumental color. With deference to Steven Guy (who's done yeoman's service in producing public-domain versions of some of this music!), I'd have to say I can gladly overlook the historical inaccuracy of using crumhorns, racketts etc. in exchange for the sheer sense of scale and awe that McCreesh provides. I own the Musica Fiata recording he mentions, and it's excellent--but it probably won't send 10,000 volts through your skull the way the massed choirs, ensembles and organ on this disc will.

This is one of my favorite recordings. The production values are supurb, the sound is supurb and the music is fresh and unhackneyed.

The setting of In Dulci Jubilo that concludes this recording will blow you right out of the room. If this is how it really sounded then, no wonder people were more likely to go to church. Compared to the feeble pablum that passes for church music today, this is heaven-sent. Do not miss it.