Customer Reviews

The Triumphs of Oriana

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The Triumphs of Oriana are a collection of polyphonic songs of the Elisabethian period published by Morley to honour Oriana (poetic nickname of Queen Elisabeth I). Therefore he collected songs composed by 25 wellknown English composers of his time (only William Byrd is missing) which all end with the words "Long life fair Oriana".
I already heard the Triumphs of Oriana sung by the King's Singers. This version by I Fagiolini sounds differently, as they are 7 men and 3 women instead of 6 men, but the result is very interesting: the female voices give indeed more brilliant to the sound.
Because this series was famous in its time among the amateurs, for private concerts, this CD includes various lute pieces in order to sound like an Elisabethian private concert.
Today, the listener has other standards and I don't find this idea is really good: it deforces the a cappella songs by a kind of intermezzo.
Anyway, the listener has yet the possibility to skip the lute pieces if he likes thanks to the miracle of the CD player.
In that case, the CD is really very good.

This really is a beautiful collection of music. "The Triumphs of Oriana" was published in 1601 by famous English composer Thomas Morley as a collection of songs honoring Queen Elizabeth (Oriana). 25 major English composers' songs are in here, except for William Byrd. The vocals are beautiful and really take the listener back to the golden age of European civilization. There are also several lute pieces inserted into the CD to add to the Renaissance feeling. This is an excellent CD!

I love this album. I received it as a birthday gift a short while ago, and have not stopped listening to it since; in fact, I find I can replay the pieces repeatedly and still not tire of them or grow fatigued by the music, something which I have found can happen when I listen to Renaissance-era music. All songs are sung acapella. The voices of the singers are excellent. The lead soprano female singer's voice in particular is clear and brilliant. Male and female voices are well balanced, neither one outweighing the other. As has been noted in other reviews, this album is a compilation of songs written by different composers. This helps assure that no two songs sound very much alike. In fact, there is a lot of diversity here, with moods ranging from ebullient to subdued. I very much enjoy the lute interludes as well, finding them a nice diversion from the sets of vocal pieces. All in all I highly recommend this album. I have found it to be a real gem. I purchased the MP3 download version, and found the sound quality to be excellent. I do not know what packing material may or may not have come with the CD version, however, scores with lyrics for many of the pieces can be found at the *CPDL (dot) org* site. Sadly Amazon strips hyperlinks out of reviews, so I couldn't post that here (I tried, and they removed it), but a search on the CPDL...org site provides that information. Enjoy!