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Visions of Joy | The Chapel of Hieronymus Bosch
Pierre de La Rue

Cappella Pratensis

Visions of Joy | The Chapel of Hieronymus Bosch

Price: € 6.95
Format: SACD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917271027
Catnr: CC 72710
Release date: 03 June 2016
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Label
Challenge Classics
UPC
0608917271027
Catalogue number
CC 72710
Release date
03 June 2016

"From the point of view of the repertoire and the interpretation is this CD is of great importance. This is in addition to the musical completely  successful interpretation. The result is a very captivating production"

Toccata, 01-7-2017
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Artist(s)
Composer(s)
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About the album

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 honour 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









Een muzikaal eerbetoon aan Hieronimus Bosch
Dit album bevat een opname van het polyfone meesterwerk Missa cum Jocunditate, maar het is vooral een eerbetoon aan Hieronimus Bosch, wiens 500-jarige overlijden overal ter wereld gelegenheid gaf om zijn werk nogmaals te eren.

Uit afbeeldingen van musici en muziekinstrumenten op zijn schilderijen en schetsen blijkt dat Bosch gefascineerd was door muziek. Hij was een broeder van de Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap in s’Hertogenbosch. Elke woensdag kon Bosch naar de bijeenkomst van de broeders in de kapel in de Sint-Janskathedraal om de mis ter ere van de Heilige Maagd te vieren. Hij zou daar het koor bestaande uit mannen en jongens hebben horen zingen. Ze zongen niet alleen oude Gregoriaanse gezangen, maar ook complexe nieuwe muziek in de vorm van polyfone missen en motetten. Cappella Pratensis probeert op dit album de klanken vast te leggen die Bosch in zijn leven heeft gehoord. De klanken worden niet vertegenwoordigd door de angstaanjagende kakafonie die Bosch’s interpretatie van de Hel oproept, maar door de vreugde en kalmte van de wekelijkse Mariamissen.

De Missa cum Jocunditate van Pierre de la Rue is uitgekozen voor dit album omdat De la Rue niet alleen de meest vermaarde componist van het hof van Habsburg-Bourgondië was, maar ook een extern lid van de broederschap. De la Rue zou Bosch wel eens ontmoet kunnen hebben.

Cappella Pratensis maakt gebruik van de originele notatie, opgeschreven in schaalmodellen van de manuscripten van de Broederschap. Daarnaast wordt de Latijnse tekst op zijn Brabants uitgesproken, iets wat de zangers van de Broederschap zeker gedaan hebben.

Cappella Pratensis is een ervaren ensemble met een groot aantal opnames van polyfone werken bij Challenge Classics. Ze houden zich aan de regels van musicologisch onderzoek en praktijkonderzoek.
Musik war etwas, das den großen niederländischen Künstler Hieronymus Bosch eindeutig faszinierte. Abbildungen von Musikern und Instrumenten zieren Gemälde und Skizzen, doch es sind bei Weitem nicht nur himmlische Szenen, die Bosch ersinnt - Unzüchtiges, Spöttisches, Teuflisches ist ebenso tief verankert. Doch anstelle der furchterregenden Kakophonie von Boschs Höllenvisionen soll hier die friedvolle, feierliche Stimmung dominieren, die Bosch als Mitglied der religiösen Bruderschaft Unserer Lieben Frau Woche für Woche in der Messe gehört hat. Dabei konnten die Sänger der Bruderschaft aus einer Vielzahl von Vertonungen des Ordinariums wählen, und genauso tun es auch die Musiker heute. Mit den sorgfältig ausgewählten Werken sucht diese Einspielung, eine Momentaufnahme der frommen Gesänge zu machen, die Bosch erlebt haben mag. In der Andacht mit Hieronymus Bosch - die Cappella Pratensis macht es möglich.

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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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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Press

From the point of view of the repertoire and the interpretation is this CD is of great importance. This is in addition to the musical completely  successful interpretation. The result is a very captivating production
Toccata, 01-7-2017

(...) Lovers of renaissance music should not hesitate to add these two discs to their collection. (...)
Johan van Veen, 13-2-2017

Amadeus Online - 09/01/2017
Amadeus Online, 09-1-2017

Classica / 01-01-2016
Classica, 01-10-2016

Classic Voice - 1 september 2016
Classic Voice, 01-9-2016

"All these works are without a doubt examples of beauty, but Capella's approximation is particularly polished."
, 01-9-2016

Although still some nasal, seems to be the total sound moved to that of the specialized clubs as those in United Kingdom-taut, pure, with some more body.
NRC Handelsblad, 18-8-2016

No Quote    
Frankfurter Allgemeine, 15-8-2016

Capella Pratensis and Capilla Flamenca have got amazing voices that follow the historical reconstruction of their conductors in a great way.
Klassiek Centraal, 24-7-2016

" [...] Missa Cum jocunditate is a Marian Mass , sung as historically accurate as possible by Cappella Pratensis [...] "
VPRO - Vrije geluiden, 22-7-2016

" [...] The vocal ensemble Cappella Pratensis have taken the music of this hero out of a acrchive from Brabant [...] "
De Volkskrant, 20-7-2016

Licht op Vier PrijsCD
Prijs CD AVROTROS Licht op Vier, 12-7-2016

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Often bought together with..

Jean Mouton
Ezekiel's Eagle - A Renaissance Brotherhood celebrates St John the Evangelist - The Den Bosch Choirbooks vol. 2
Cappella Pratensis / Stratton Bull
Wim Henderickx
Nostalgia
Boho Strings
Josquin Desprez
Missa Ave maris stella
Cappella Pratensis / Stratton Bull
Johannes Ockeghem, Pierre de La Rue
Requiem
Cappella Pratensis
Jacob Obrecht
Missa De Sancto Donatiano (bruges 1487)
Cappella Pratensis

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