| Viivakoodi: | MM11302015CV |
| Julkaisupäivä: | 2015-11-30 |
| Saatavilla (kpl): | 1 |
| Kesto | 52:28 |
| Artisti | Cantores Vagantes |
Christmas Music from the 16th Century
The early music studio Cantores Vagantes has been around since 1989. We are a group of musicians who wish to interpret early music using copies of original instruments, respecting historical performance practice. The composition of our studio is not fixed – rather, it can be seen as a fellowship where performers vary depending on the requirements of the music. This time, Cantores Vagantes consists of Reet Sukk, Taavi-Mats Utt, Andres Siitan (recorders) and Taniel Kirikal (voice and recorder).
Since the time when half of our quartet studied in The Hague, at the end of the last millennium, and had our first opportunity to play the copies of renaissance instruments, 16th century music went absent from Cantores Vagantes’s repertoire for more than ten years. We dreamt of suitable recorders – we considered instruments essential, since we felt that a lot was lost when playing this music on later era instruments. Dreams have a habit of coming true, and thus we now have the pleasure of introducing Cantores Vagantes’s renaissance recorders to the listener.
Cantores Vagantes have been playing recorders built by me for a longer period of time already, but a consort of renaissance recorders seemed too big a challenge. Namely, I had decided that I would not let the work of my contemporaries guide me, yet gaining access to the original instruments hidden away in museums was almost impossible for an unknown enthusiast. Therefore I sought musicians who had experience from playing original instruments. Baldrick Deerenberg became my first helper along the road. His drawings and advice guided my first finished attempts. By chance, these instruments caught the attention of Heiko ter Schegget, and pretty soon an offer arrived from him: to jointly build a consort of 11 instruments for Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. This order opened up the doors of several important museums to us. Thanks to the generous help from the foremost expert on renaissance recorders, Adrian Brown, we were well prepared for getting to know the originals closer.
I must confess that the picture that emerged while studying the original instruments was not quite the expected one, nor did it make life easier. However, we decided not to start correcting any “flaws” of the originals in our copies. Maybe thanks to precisely this, these recorders have been our guides and teachers and helped us to partake in the music of the 16th century. Or, more precisely, in a rather small part of this treasure, which would take more than a lifetime to learn to know properly.
Along this beautiful journey we have experienced some entirely new emotions. Compared to the 18th century music, which until now has been the main part of Cantores Vagantes’s repertoire, the sheer amount of music here, completely unknown to us, presented an unfamiliar situation. Frankly, we were perplexed. We played the music for hours and hours, all of which felt extraordinary; there seemed to be no weaker pieces. What to select for our concert performances and what to leave out? In the first round, we left out all Christmas songs – they would seem strange to play at our summer concerts. Now we remembered them and from those “remnants” our current Christmas program was born, a program we also decided to record. A bit eclectic, for the most part “new” and from varying language areas, but still familiar.
Recorders used:
g alto, c tenors and f bass, after originals bearing the !! maker’s mark
d tenor, g bassets and C bass, after originals bearing the Hier•S maker’s mark
a ≈ 463 Hz
