Customer Reviews

A Star in the East: Medieval Hungarian Christmas Music

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The history of the destruction of much of the Hungarian Christian repetoire gives interesting insights into why this variant of plainsong is essential unknown. Because of the limited survival of polyphonic pieces, this performance is less varied than On Yoolis Night. There is one, and only one, motet.

The notes describe the identifying characteristics of Hungarian chant as "wide intervallic leaps, pentatonic tendencies and extended cadences". I'll take their word for the technical description.

If you like plainsong or polyphony, you will enjoy this cd. The chant is just enough different to add variety to your listening and just similar enough to not require new listening skills.

As usual, the Anonymous 4 have done us the favor of bringing unfamilar music to our attention and performing it excellently so that we can come to share their enthusiasm for it.

'Legends of St. Nicholas' and 'A Star in the East' are both collections of medieval Christmas music. Both are based heavily on Latin chants. The first has some old English lyrics and the second is based on both original Hungarian material and material imported into Hungary from Greece and other centers of Eastern Christianity.

If you are considering one or the other, I find the 'Legends of St. Nicholas' to be the more diverse of the two, as it has chant, polyphony, and even some solo voices. The Hungarian selection seems just a bit too much like all the other material done by Anonymous 4.

To be sure, both are done with a typically exceptional high quality voice and recording technique, so you will not go wrong with either recording.

Both are highly recommended!

I love this music and I think Anonymous 4 are wonderfull and very gifted performers. The problem is that I don't like the quality of the recording. I don't buy a lot of classical music so I'm wondering if this is a common thing. As soon as I wan't to turn this music up and listen to it loud I hear this very annoying hiss. I've heard this before on cheap classical recordings so I'm surprised that I hear it on this, which should be a 100% quality product.

I am not a sour classical music perfectionist. I listen to this for the ambient quality of the music and I don't understand why that annoying windy hiss has not been omitted from the recording?

The music is as good as this kind of music gets though and I hope they get a better producer or decent studio microphones.

This CD has become a Christmas time staple in my house. It, along with On Yoolis Night, warms up my holidays.

Anyone who knows Anonymous 4 know what great voices they have. This CD is a rarity as it brings out the Hungarian Catholic Culture to light with its rich expression and words. A star in the east is a must have for any serious collector of early music. If you're religiously inclined and practice the Catholic faith in particular it is a great aid in meditation. Close your eyes and it transports you to the great medieval cathedrals of Europe! If you're of Hungarian descent, then you can value the sublimity of these compositions and appreciate the Hungarian soul!

I don't know much about the band, or this style of music, all I know is that all the songs are beautiful. I always play it around Christmas, or just when I need to relax.

I am grateful to the anonymous individual or individuals responsible for having written these remarkable pieces. I can only imagine what it might have been like to live in Midieval Hungary and feel inspired to create music so profound and timeless. If God did hear them I can only imagine him/her/it stunned by their beauty.

How nice it is to live in a time when music such as this can be made available for our listening pleasure by the wonderfully talented and dedicated people of the Anonymous 4 and the technicians who make such recordings possible.

So many people have come together in the course of 1000 years or so to make a CD like this possible.

I salute you all for you contribution to this effort. It is a thing of beauty.

The music from Hungary shows a great deal of cross-pollination from other Christian sources - when the Hungarians became Christian during the reign of Charlemagne, they began sending their clerics to France and other places in Europe for schooling until the Hungarians built up their own scholastic traditions; later, being on the front-lines of the East/West split meant that they also had issues dealing with maintaining their own traditions. Thus, sources of polyphony and other music are rare. According to Susan Hellauer, 'A very large proportion of the surviving polyphonic works are for the Christmas season, and considering the rare and special nature of polyphony in medieval Hungary, this could only have meant that Christmas was especially reverenced there.' In our Western culture, it is hard to imagine, but Christmas has not always been a major holiday in every historical period and place in Christendom.

Thus, this is a Christmas album with a difference. 'A Star in the East' obviously refers to the star leading the Magi, and the rest of the music here taps into the gospel stories and legends that surround the Christmas tale.

The Anonymous 4 once again have put together a marvelous piece, with a musical tone shining as brightly as any star that might lead a wise man. The qualities of the Hungarian music show both similarities with the broader Christian culture as well as unique aspects that draw on the longer tradition of Hungarian music in worship, which pre-dates the arrival of Christianity by centuries.

-- Liner Notes --
This text accompaniment to this disc is very full, so much so that the booklet is not contained within the jewel case, but rather within a slipcover in which both the CD/jewel case and the booklet reside. The liner notes include a description of the work, a brief piece about the quartet, and the lyrics of the songs both in original language and in translation. The cover art is from an altar piece of Nemetlipsce, from the Magyar Nemzeti Galeria of Budapest. There is also a reproduction of a page of music from the Codex in the notes, as well as other images from Hungarian altar pieces.

-- Anonymous 4 --
Contrary to the implication of their name, the Anonymous 4 are not anonymous. This is a vocal quartet made up of Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, and Johanna Rose at the time of this recording (Ruth Cunningham will later go on to a solo career early, and another member will join - Jacqueline Horner). They came together as a formal group in 1986, and have been ensemble-in-residence at St. Michael's Church in New York City, giving concert series in New York as well as throughout North America. They have been featured a number of times on national media in North America as well as Germany. They then went on to yet more success, eventually performing more that 1000 concerts worldwide.

Their specialty is working with chant, monophonic and polyphonic music, and working with medieval texts. According to one source, 'The group takes its name from an anonymous music theorist of the late 13th century, Anonymous IV, who is the principal source on the two famous composers of the Notre Dame school, Léonin and Pérotin.'

The group ended a touring career of nearly two decades in 2004.