The Amsterdam-based recorder quintet has done it again: an original concept, featuring several first recordings, and superb performances which confirm them among the top-tier of today’s early-music chamber ensembles. The present album arises from a concert devised in 2018 for a festival in Bruges celebrating notable female figures from history.

Seldom Sene chose to focus on Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), who was governor of the Habsburg Netherlands for almost 20 years. Margaret had grown up with the benefits of a first-class education afforded to very few of her female peers: she was adept in all the humanities, and her library of books was reckoned one of the most extensive and learned at the time, a fit place to welcome distinguished guests such as Albrecht Dürer. From around 1515, one of the volumes in Margaret’s library was her newly commissioned personal songbook: a collection of 55 chansons and motets, richly decorated with high-quality miniatures and initials.

Many of the song texts speak of loss, sorrow and loneliness, perhaps reflecting her status at the time as a noble widow, following the death of her second husband, Philibert II of Savoy, in 1504. Margaret herself seems to have written several of them, and may also have been involved in their musical setting. Marian devotion is another theme of the songbook reflected in this selection made and transcribed and recorded by Seldom Sene. Sacred hymns are balanced out by secular laments, but also lighter and more cheerful numbers such as ‘Brunette m’amiette‘ and ‘La jonne dame’. Many of the composers are now lost to us and effectively anonymous, but the names that survive are worthy of Margaret’s elevated status, including Josquin and Pierre de la Rue.

‘Like Margaret,’ concludes María Martínez Ayerza in her booklet note, ‘like her courtiers and visitors, we see and hear the music and texts in this songbook and we are moved, stirred. These artworks make us change, as we relate the texts, even the titles, and the rather abstract beauty of the music to ourselves.’ Ayerza and her colleagues in Seldom Sene bring this music and Margaret’s world back to life with intense sympathy. The album is sure to receive the glowing reviews accorded to the group’s discography on Brilliant Classics. ‘Commitment, technical versatility, unanimity of ensemble and near-immaculate tuning on display.’ (Gramophone) ‘An excellent release from an ensemble I hope we’ll hear a lot more from in the future.’ (Fanfare)

Music clearly fascinated the great Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516); his sketches and paintings are peppered with closely observed depictions of music-making and musical instruments. Bosch, a native of ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Duchy of Brabant, was a life-long brother of the city’s Brotherhood of Our Illustrious Lady, a large and prestigious organization for which sacred music was an essential and highly-valued part of its devotional life. Every Wednesday Bosch could gather with his Confraternity brothers in their opulent chapel in the church of St. John the Evangelist to celebrate a votive Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin. This recording aims to capture a sense of the devotional soundscape that Bosch experienced throughout his life as a member of this music-loving Marian brotherhood. Instead of the frightening cacophony conjured by the artist’s vision of Hell, we encounter here the joy and serenity of the weekly Marian votive Mass liturgy. We have chosen the Missa Cum jocunditate by Pierre de la Rue(c.1452-1518), who was not only the most renowned composer of the Habsburg-Burgundian court but also an external member of the brotherhood from the early 1490s until his death in 1518. Indeed, La Rue may well have had occasion to meet Bosch during these years. Cappella Pratensis sings from the original notation, reading from scale copies of the confraternity’s manuscripts of plainsong and polyphony, and adopts the Brabant pronunciation of Latin those singers surely employed. They also read together from one large music book, like the men portrayed in the Singers in the Egg sketch attributed to Bosch.

Resonating across more than five centuries, expressions of personal piety and prayer fill these works by a quartet of Franco-Flemish composers, all born in the 15th century, and their modern-day colleagues, Estonian Cyrillus Kreek (1889—1962) and British-Norwegian Andrew Smith (b. 1970). For those familiar with the vocal ensemble New York Polyphony and its previous, acclaimed releases on BIS, this exploration of the intersection of ancient and modern music is far from surprising: the group is known for its innovative programming. On And the sun darkened the four members follow Josquin’s celebrated motet Tu pauperum refugium with Andrew Smith’s setting of Psalm 55 – composed for NYP, it is a lament which nevertheless closes with an expression of confidence in God’s justice. Sung in Estonian another biblical psalm is heard in Kreek’s Taaveti laul 22 (‘David’s 22nd Song’), the text ‘My God, why have you forsaken me’ preparing the listener for the work that has given the disc its title. Officium de Cruce by Loyset Compère is a setting of a 14th-century hymn which follows the episodes of the Passion in a continuously flowing musical narrative: from the betrayal of Christ to his death – when the sun darkened – and entombment.

REVIEWS:

The vocal quartet New York Polyphony has excelled with a fine vocal blend and programs of Renaissance and contemporary choral music that often touch on underrepresented repertory. Josquin is present, but only with a single piece, and the focus is on his much less often heard contemporaries and successors, Loyset Compère, Pierre de la Rue, and Adrian Willaert. The one-voice-per-part forces of New York Polyphony may be an obstacle for some, inasmuch as this is not how Josquin was meant to be performed; the group's singing has a madrigalesque quality, and that's not everyone's cup of tea, but this might be the album to check out for those who have been wanting to sample New York Polyphony's work. Another attraction is BIS's sound, captured in Princeton Abbey in New Jersey; it's entirely distinct from that of the big English chapels where most recordings this repertory are made, and it's absorbingly inward.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

The four member, standard setting chamber vocal ensemble New York Polyphony continues to transfix listeners with their pure, dynamically balanced and deeply expressive a cappella singing. It's hard to believe how a group of only four male voices can sound like much more than the sum of its parts. Regardless of which century the members of New York Polyphony happen to explore at any given moment, you can sense their deep respect and understanding of both the text and music at all times. Their perfectly matched voices create a sonic canopy akin to the nave of a gothic cathedral, with audio engineering to match. Guaranteed you will feel the urge to listen to this recording many times over.

– Classical Music Sentinel (Jean-Yves Duperron, 2021)

Making their Inventa Records debut, the Linarol Consort of Renaissance Viols presents a recording of German, Flemish and French viol consort pieces of the early sixteenth century. Recorded from a new edition of a rare manuscript held in the vast collection of the National Library of Austria, in Vienna, the manuscript is not widely known by exponents of music of this period. The completion of the manuscript dates to around 1535, and soon after it was finished it was in the library of the wealthiest and most influential of German merchants of the sixteenth century, Jacob Fugger, who is held to be one of the wealthiest individuals in history.

Beauty Farm is a 2014 founded vocal group focused on the Franco-Flemish polyphony of the renaissance. The international ensemble is based in the Carthusian Monastery at Mauerbach (Austria). The singers are members of well known ensembles like Capilla flamenca, Huelgas Ensemble, Vox Luminis, Collegium Vocale Gent and Graindelavoix. On this extensive release, the ever-acclaimed vocal quartet presents four masses of Pierre de la Rue, all composed during the composer's last creative period. Pierre de la Rue is one of the most fascinating and yet most elusive members of the talented generation of composers from around 1500. On the works recorded here he demonstrates his complete polyphonic skills and thus gives the melancholy an intellectual, complex nuance. The necessary lightness is provided by the voices of Bart Uvyn, Hans Jörg Mammel, Hannes Wagner and Joachim Höchbauer.