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Requiem
Johannes Ockeghem, Pierre de La Rue

Cappella Pratensis

Requiem

Price: € 20.95
Format: SACD hybrid
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917254129
Catnr: CC 72541
Release date: 13 January 2012
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Label
Challenge Classics
UPC
0608917254129
Catalogue number
CC 72541
Release date
13 January 2012

""In the Missa Cum Jocunditate the singers create dazzling columns of sound with relaxed voices.""

De Volkskrant, 15-9-2016
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Artist(s)
Composer(s)
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About the album

For its third CD on the Challenge label, Cappella Pratensis turns the page back to the very beginnings of the tradition of settings of the Requiem mass. The Requiems by Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497) and Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452-1518) form an ideal pairing, as they are the first polyphonic versions of the Mass for the Dead from the brilliant composers of the Franco-Flemish school. La Rue clearly drew inspiration from his older colleague, echoing Ockeghem's sober yet sonorous style. Both works were praised in their time, with Ockeghem's described as "exquise et très parfaicte" (exquisite and most perfect) and La Rue's as "die klangvollste Musik, die man hören konnte" (the most harmonious music you could ever hear). It is clear that these composers reserved their richest inspiration for the setting of a text that was so deep that few dared to stray from the purity of the Gregorian Chant version. By bringing these two works together, Cappella Pratensis offers not only the chance to hear the beginning of one of the great traditions in Western art-music, but also two profound musical translations of the words of consolation that mark the passing of our fellow travellers in life.
Betoverende muziek uit de late middeleeuwen
In deze uitvoering voert het ensemble Cappella Pratensis ons terug naar het ontstaan van de dodenmis, het requiem. De requims van Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497) en Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452-1518) vormen een ideale combinatie. Vooral ook omdat het hier gaat om de eerste meerstemmige (polyfone) dodenmissen van twee vooraanstaande meesters uit de Franco-Vlaamse school. Door het bijeenbrengen van deze werken biedt Cappella Pratensis de gelegenheid, om het begin van een van de grootste tradities in de Westerse kunst-muziek mee te beleven. Én de kans om de woorden van troost in een onvergelijkbaar gelukte muzikale vertaling op ons te laten inwerken. "In de Missa Cum Jocunditate trekken de zangers met ontspannen kelen, fraaie zuilen van geluid op." De Volkskrant, september 2016.

Johannes Ockeghem stond bekend als een technisch zeer knap vakman. Sommigen beweren dat hij zelf een lage zangstem had, wat zou blijken uit zijn koorwerken, waarin contratenor en bas een voor die tijd opvallende laagte hadden. De la Rue werd duidelijk geïnspireerd door zijn oudere collega Ockeghem, aangezien hij diens sobere, maar toch sonore stijl nadeed. Beider Requiem werd in hun tijd alom geprezen. De versie van Ockeghem werd omschreven als 'exquise en erg perfect' en die van De la Rue als 'de meest klankrijke muziek die er bestaat'. Duidelijk is zeker, dat deze componisten een inspirerende topprestatie leverden bij het optekenen van de tekst. Deze tekst voelde zo diep, dat weinigen het waagden om van de pure schoonheid van het Gregoriaanse gezang af te wijken.

Cappella Pratensis, opgericht in 1987, zingt vooral de muziek uit de periode tussen 1450 en 1600. Toonaangevende muziek van Franco-Vlaamse polyfonisten als Pierre de La Rue en Johannes Ockeghem. De groep combineert een historische uitvoeringspraktijk met originele programma’s en verrassende interpretaties, gebaseerd op wetenschappelijk onderzoek en artistiek inzicht. Zanger en dirigent Stratton Bull is artistiek leider van het ensemble.

Die ersten polyphonen Reqiem-Vertonungen

Für seine dritte CD bei Challenge Classics geht Cappella Pratensis ganz zu den Anfängen der Tradition der Totenmesse zurück. Die Requiems von Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497) und Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452-1518) bilden eine ideale Paarung, da es sich hier um die ersten polyphonen Totenmessen von zwei hervorragenden Meistern der Franco-Flämischen Schule handelt.

Somit bietet Cappella Pratensis die Chance, den Anfang einer der großen Traditionen in der westlichen Kunstmusik mitzuerleben und die Worte der Tröstung in einer unvergleichlich gelungenen musikalischen Umsetzung auf uns wirken zu lassen.

Artist(s)

Cappella Pratensis

Cappella Pratensis specializes in the music of Josquin Desprez (= Josqinus Pratensis) and other polyphonic composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The ensemble performs its own programs and original interpretations, which are based on academic research. As was customary in the renaissance, the singers of Cappella Pratensis usually stand around a central music stand, singing from facsimiles of original choirbooks. This creates a unique perspective on the repertoire. The ensemble, founded in 1987, is now under the artistic direction of singer and conductor Stratton Bull. In addition to regular concerts in the Netherlands and Belgium, Cappella Pratensis performs in leading international festivals and venues in France, Portugal, Germany and the United States. The ensemble also has also released several CD...
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Cappella Pratensis specializes in the music of Josquin Desprez (= Josqinus Pratensis) and other polyphonic composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The ensemble performs its own programs and original interpretations, which are based on academic research. As was customary in the renaissance, the singers of Cappella Pratensis usually stand around a central music stand, singing from facsimiles of original choirbooks. This creates a unique perspective on the repertoire. The ensemble, founded in 1987, is now under the artistic direction of singer and conductor Stratton Bull.

In addition to regular concerts in the Netherlands and Belgium, Cappella Pratensis performs in leading international festivals and venues in France, Portugal, Germany and the United States. The ensemble also has also released several CD recordings which have been greeted with rave press reviews and awards, including the Diapason d’Or and the Prix Choc. From 2005 to 2007, Cappella Pratensis was ensemble-in-residence at the Fondation Royaumont (France), where it gave courses and concerts, and worked with several prominent musicians. In 2009, it released a DVD/CD production of the Missa de Sancto Donatiano by Jacob Obrecht, which contained a reconstruction of the first performance of this mass, filmed on location in Bruges, supplemented with extensive documentation. This production was awarded with a Diapason découverte and the highest rating in the professional magazine Classica.

The CD Vivat Leo! Music for a Medici Pope (2010), directed by guest conductor Joshua Rifkin, was awarded a Diapason d’Or. A successful series of concerts of the Requiem of Pierre de la Rue was led by guest conductor Bo Holten. A DVD of one of these concerts, performed as part of the event Jheronimus Bosch 500, was released in 2010 under the title Bosch Requiem.

In January 2012 a new CD, containing the earliest surviving polyphonic requiem masses in music history, those by Johannes Ockeghem and Pierre de la Rue. In February 2014 the ensemble released a CD containing music written for the feast of the Assumption and transmitted in choirbooks from the Vatican, including Josquin Desprez’s masterpiece Missa Ave maris stella. In late 2015, the ensemble recorded the Missa Cum Jocunditate by Pierre de la Rue.
In 2016, Cappella and the Nederlands Kamerkoor performed eight concerts of the world premiere of the Missa Unitatis, composed in 2008 by Anthony Pitts (* 1969) in a unique partnership with choirs in Antwerp, Breda, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Eindhoven, Tilburg and Helmond. It has also performed during the Early Music Festival in Utrecht, and presented five performances of the program Christmas with Josquin in the Season of Early Music.

Cappella Pratensis shares its vision and approach to vocal polyphony with professionals and amateurs in masterclasses, with multimedia presentations, and also in a week-long summer school that takes place annually during the festival Laus Polyphoniae in Antwerp. In a structural collaboration with the universities of Leuven and Oxford, the musical manuscripts of the workshop of Petrus Alamire are explored by musicologists and adapted for use by other musicians.


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Christopher Kale

Christopher Kale, tenor, was born in Pennsylvania, USA. He graduated from Boston University with a Bachelors and a Masters degree (cum laude). He then won an international scholarship for study in Amsterdam with Max van Egmond. Christopher Kale is mainly active in the renaissance and medieval repertoire as a member of Cappella Pratensis, Huelgas Ensemble, Capilla Flamenca, Aventure, the Boston Camerata, and the Nederlands Kamerkoor. As a soloist, he has made many commercial CD recordings of, among others, the Messiah (Händel), Lamentations (Gilles), Vespers (Monteverdi), and many Renaissance masses and motets, Medieval songs, and Early American music. Christopher Kale has been heard as a soloist in old music festivals worldwide, such as in Utrecht, Boston, Ghent, Bruges, York, Victoria, Cuenca,...
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Christopher Kale, tenor, was born in Pennsylvania, USA. He graduated from Boston University with a Bachelors and a Masters degree (cum laude). He then won an international scholarship for study in Amsterdam with Max van Egmond. Christopher Kale is mainly active in the renaissance and medieval repertoire as a member of Cappella Pratensis, Huelgas Ensemble, Capilla Flamenca, Aventure, the Boston Camerata, and the Nederlands Kamerkoor. As a soloist, he has made many commercial CD recordings of, among others, the Messiah (Händel), Lamentations (Gilles), Vespers (Monteverdi), and many Renaissance masses and motets, Medieval songs, and Early American music. Christopher Kale has been heard as a soloist in old music festivals worldwide, such as in Utrecht, Boston, Ghent, Bruges, York, Victoria, Cuenca, Saintes, and Kostenevica. His trips to the Romantic repertoire are usually as a member of a duo with Jelma van Amersfoort.

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Olivier Berten

After studying communication and multimedia, Olivier Berten enters the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels where he gets a diploma in opera-singing with Marcel Vanaud. He is going to advanced studies in the conservatories of Amsterdam, Metz and Brussels with Udo Reinemann and other masters of Lied. He was in 2004-2005 part ofOperastudio Vlaanderen in Ghent.  He makes his debut in the Monnaie opera house as Brühlmann ('Werther' van Massenet) under the baton of Kazushi Ono. In 2008, he was on the stage of the Flemish Opera in the leading role of Villa Vivaldi by Wouter van Looy en Jan Van Outryve. Upcoming projects include 'L'enfant et les sortilèges' with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège and 'Ne criez pas au loup' in the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.
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After studying communication and multimedia, Olivier Berten enters the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels where he gets a diploma in opera-singing with Marcel Vanaud. He is going to advanced studies in the conservatories of Amsterdam, Metz and Brussels with Udo Reinemann and other masters of Lied. He was in 2004-2005 part ofOperastudio Vlaanderen in Ghent. He makes his debut in the Monnaie opera house as Brühlmann ("Werther" van Massenet) under the baton of Kazushi Ono. In 2008, he was on the stage of the Flemish Opera in the leading role of Villa Vivaldi by Wouter van Looy en Jan Van Outryve. Upcoming projects include "L'enfant et les sortilèges" with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège and "Ne criez pas au loup" in the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.

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Composer(s)

Pierre de La Rue

Pierre de la Rue was a true Belgian: born in Tournai, he worked the first decades of his life in Brussels, Ghent and 's-Hertogenbosch, and spent his final years in Kortrijk. All the while, he only ever took one position as a composer, at the Flemish Chapel of the Burgundian court. There, he developed himself into a prolific composers, who wrote a large number of missas, motets and chansons. In these works, he shows his virtuosity particularly in the use of complex counterpoint. He wrote, for example, complete four-voiced missas based on a single melody.  De la Rue was also one of the first to compose polyphonic Requiems as a unique cycle of compositions in different keys based on the magnificat. Strangely,...
more

Pierre de la Rue was a true Belgian: born in Tournai, he worked the first decades of his life in Brussels, Ghent and 's-Hertogenbosch, and spent his final years in Kortrijk. All the while, he only ever took one position as a composer, at the Flemish Chapel of the Burgundian court. There, he developed himself into a prolific composers, who wrote a large number of missas, motets and chansons. In these works, he shows his virtuosity particularly in the use of complex counterpoint. He wrote, for example, complete four-voiced missas based on a single melody.

De la Rue was also one of the first to compose polyphonic Requiems as a unique cycle of compositions in different keys based on the magnificat. Strangely, Pierre de la Rue's music is generally less known than the music by Josquin and his other contemporaries, yet there are just as many gems to discover in his body of work!


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Johannes Ockeghem

When his ex-student Josquin Desprez wrote his Nymphes des bois, a moving and impressive work to lament the death of his master, Ockeghem reputation as one of the greatest composers of the 15th century was truly established. And Josquin wasn't the only one who praised him. Many poets and musicians regarded him as a genius, both as a composer and as a musician. Nowadays, his music is mostly described as relatively inaccesible, because often it is one single polyphonic stream without pauses for breaths. Yet, this particular aspect of his music is also what makes it so exciting and focused. Ockeghem's music might not always be easy on the ears, but its structure is incredibly refined with a soft sound. This is especially...
more
When his ex-student Josquin Desprez wrote his Nymphes des bois, a moving and impressive work to lament the death of his master, Ockeghem reputation as one of the greatest composers of the 15th century was truly established. And Josquin wasn't the only one who praised him. Many poets and musicians regarded him as a genius, both as a composer and as a musician. Nowadays, his music is mostly described as relatively inaccesible, because often it is one single polyphonic stream without pauses for breaths. Yet, this particular aspect of his music is also what makes it so exciting and focused.
Ockeghem's music might not always be easy on the ears, but its structure is incredibly refined with a soft sound. This is especially the case in his missas, with his melancholic Missa Mi-Mi as the pinnacle. Other highlights are his Missa prolationum and his Requiem (the first polyphonic requiem in the history of music!). Ockeghem also wrote several motets and about twenty chansons.
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Press

"In the Missa Cum Jocunditate the singers create dazzling columns of sound with relaxed voices."
De Volkskrant, 15-9-2016

Their exemplary performance, recorded superby in knock-out Hybrid SACD High Definition Surround Sound, are deeply embedded in both music and text - exquisite stuff.
Choir & Organ, 01-7-2012

Serious scholarship and a commitment to performing from a central music stand with a score in the original mensural notation combined creatively with mellifluous singing.
Early Music Today, 01-6-2012

the sweeping unbarred nature of their singing is impressive and compelling
Early Music Review, 01-4-2012

studied, beautifully shaped and blended performances
Sunday Times UK, 01-4-2012

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Videos

Cappella Pratensis - Kyrie

Often bought together with..

Antonio Vivaldi
The Four Seasons
Jaap van Zweden
Pierre de La Rue
Visions of Joy | The Chapel of Hieronymus Bosch
Cappella Pratensis
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Gran Partita
Quatuor Dialogues / Ewald Demeyere
Josquin Desprez
Missa Ave maris stella
Cappella Pratensis / Stratton Bull
Various composers
Vivat Leo! Music for a Medici Pope
Cappella Pratensis & Joshua Rifkin
Jacob Obrecht
Missa De Sancto Donatiano (bruges 1487)
Cappella Pratensis

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