Remede de Fortune
works of Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Ballades, balladelles, rondelets, rondeaux and complaintes: Micheal Collver, alto; John Fleagle, tenor, harp; Shira Kammen, vielle; Laurie Monahan, mezzosoprano; Crawford Young, lute; with guest Robert Mealy, vielle An eloquent, haunting recording. Passion and refinement combine here in convincing balance. Mauchaut's advice not to trust Fortune still rings painfully true. --The Boston Phoenix The most influential 'dit amoureux' or courtly love poem in Medieval Europe, the "Remede de Fortune" of Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) secured its creator's position as the premiere poet musician of 14th century France. Written around 1340 for the extravagant court of Jean of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, the 4300 lines of the "Remedy of Fortune" codify with extreme refinement the complaints of chivalric love expressed in the previous century's famous "Roman de la Rose". A little less than a fourth of the Remede text is presented with notated music, but it is exceptional as the only long work of its kind integrating both said and sung poetry. The earliest extant copy of this work is also exceptional as one of the most extraordinary illuminated manuscripts of the period, featuring remarkably naturalistic scenes of courtly life. It was probably commissioned in 1350 by the future King Jean le Bon as a memorial to his wife Bonne, the daughter of Machaut's patron. Bonne, who had succumbed to the plague in 1349, has often been identified as the Lady of the Remede, and its inspiration. Available here: iTunes HDtracks Daughters of the Lonesome Isle
Margaret Leng Tan, pianos ... the most convincing interpreter of Cage's keyboard music. —The New York Times The eight works on this album feature the different kinds of "instruments" used by John Cage in his substantial piano oeuvre—the prepared, string, bowed and conventional piano as well as the toy piano. The disc's thirteen year span (1940-1953) encapsulates the evolution of Cage's aesthetic from Bacchanale, his first prepared piano composition, to the chance-derived abstraction of Music for Piano #2. These bookends of the album also frame my relationship with John Cage: Bacchanale was the first piece I played for him in 1981 and we discussed Music for Piano #2 the day before his fatal stroke in 1992. —Margaret Leng Tan Available here: iTunes HDtracks Crystal Psalms
An homage to Kristallnacht. A concert performed by 7 European radio stations, scored for 7 choruses, 4 trombones, 4 celli, 4 violas, 4 flutes, 4 clarinets, 2 tubas, 2 saxophones, 6 accordions, 6 percussionists, plus pre-recorded sounds. Without remembering and learning there is no survival. --Alvin Curran On October 20, 1988, a large part of western Europe heard a unique radio concert -- CRYSTAL PSALMS -- a concerto for musicians in six nations, simultaneously performed, mixed and broadcast live in stereo to listeners from Palermo to Helsinki. This special event, composed and coordinated by myself, while part of a worldwide series commemorating the 50th anniversary of the infamous Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), was, through its unusual concept, one which demanded and demonstrated an exceptional quality of international artistic and technological collaboration -- the bringing together groups of musicians and technicians (some 300 in all, in six major European cities) who neither saw nor heard one another, yet performed as one unified ensemble to realize this complex score. The score was composed to be played by complementary ensembles in each of the six locations. These consisted of: a mixed chorus (16-32 voices), a quartet of strings or winds, a percussionist and accordionist. While each group of musicians was conducted independently, a recorded time track -- heard by each conductor -- was used to synchronize all six ensembles. A pre-recorded tape containing sounds of many aspects of Jewish life was often employed together with the live sounds. Hence, the archaic sounds of the shofar (ritual ram's horn), the Yemenite Jews praying at the Western ("Wailing") Wall, famous Eastern European cantors taken from old sound archives; children in a Roman Jewish orphanage; my young niece singing her Bat Mitzvah prayers and my father singing in Yiddish at a family gathering. Ship horns, trains, crows and breaking glass, too. To this sonic panorama one hears live choral fragments of the Renaissance Jewish composers Salomone Rossi from Italy and Caceres of the famous Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam, as well as from the renowned 19th Century composers of the Jewish liturgy, Lewandowski and Sulzer. This event -- for me a very special form of human artistic collaboration -- now exists, along side the memory of the inhuman pogrom of 1938 which inspired it. One can only wish that it had been otherwise that instead we could be remembering and celebrating some noble acts of humanity and love. --Alvin Curran Available here: iTunes HDtracks |
New Albion Records, Inc.Archives
October 2010
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