Machaut: Motets The Hilliard Ensemble
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- Release Date: 03/30/2004
- Sales Rank: 31,882
- Label: ECM RECORDS
- UPC: 028947240228
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Machaut: Motets
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Editorial Reviews
Cleric, poet, and composer Guillaume de Machaut was the star of the Ars Nova, the avant-garde movement of 14th-century France, and his music can still sound surprisingly modern, with its pointed dissonances and intricate, interlocking rhythms. He was a master of the isorhythmic motet, a complex, virtuosic, and highly intellectual musical form in which several texts are sung simultaneously on different melodies, underpinned by a slow-moving cantus firmus (a pre-existing chant). This important recording collects most of Machaut's surviving motets (18 of the 23, including all of the final 5 -- those associated with Reims Cathedral) and presents them in the same order as in Machaut's own manuscript. For early music followers, that fact alone is plenty of enticement to pick up this CD, yet the Hilliard Ensemble's performance is also a revelation. Just as on their recording of music by Perotin and his 13th-century contemporaries, the Hilliards turn Machaut's remote-sounding music into something extraordinarily beautiful, singing with a refinement and assurance that only an ensemble of their stature and know-how can summon. They adopt relaxed tempos and smooth out the rough edges, concealing dissonance in a veil of seamless texture while maintaining clear diction. It's a striking and compelling recording of music that often seems stubbornly obscure, and for that reason is the best window yet into this remarkable repertoire from a key medieval artist. EJ Johnson, Barnes & Noble
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