Early Music: RFI

I haven't had much of an appetite for this sort of thing in a very long time, but Musica Secreta's Lucrezia Borgia's Daughter is very welcome at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNSLNlMmdRw

Music Of The Gothic Era or Music From The Crusades...
I already have these on CD, but would totes buy LPs if I saw them.

― nicest bitch of poster (La Lechera), Wednesday, August 1, 2012 12:37 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was lucky enough to grab a pristine copy of the Music Of the Gothic Era 3 LP set for $15 a few days ago. I've appreciated this music digitally for years, but studying the liner notes and texts has illuminated it big time, especially with the ars antiqua and ars nova motets.

This is deeply strange music--two (or three) different texts sung simultaneously, alternately harmonizing and hocketing with each other. Sometimes the texts are closely related to each other, and sometimes sung from different/contrasting perspectives. Of course I don't understand Latin or medieval French, but I'd imagine if I did understand the language, listening to these motets would be even more of a head-spinning experience, figuring out which text to follow or attempting to keep track of both at the same time.

So I'm wondering if there are examples of motets or other music with a similar effect in English, from that era or beyond (The Velvet Underground "The Murder Mystery" is what immediately comes to mind for me). It seems like after the gothic era composers tended to base compositions around a single text rather than two or more overlapping texts, but maybe I'm wrong about that...

I just put together a show about pre-historic music, interviewed Simon O'Dwyer of Ancient Music Ireand, he reconstructs bronze age / iron age instruments and figures out how they were played.

https://centuriesofsound.com/2023/09/11/centuries-of-sound-radiopod-prequel-special-1-ancient-sounds-with-simon-odwyer-of-ancient-music-ireland/

They've also just launched a sound library called Paleosonic - https://www.ancientmusicireland.com/sound-library

this is so great!

Thanks, I was surprised at how much was out there, I had the idea that it was just the Hurrian hymn, but could've put together several hours.

Yoooo