O Rose So Red
Melbourne-based Schola Cantorum, directed by Gary Ekkel, present chants, songs and motets that honour the Virgin Mary across more than a thousand years of sacred repertoire.
Gary Ekkel conductor
Ross Mitchell violin
Fiona Furphy cello
Elizabeth Anderson chamber organ
Hieronymus Praetorius composer
Jan Dismas Zelenka composer
Pérotin composer
John Dunstable composer
Johannes Ockeghem composer
Francisco Guerrero composer
Tomás Luis de Victoria composer
Richard Dering composer
The red rose is one of the most enduring images of the Virgin Mary. It carries wide-ranging associations: the fertility of the Madonna, the beauty of the bride of Christ, the fragrances of Heaven, the passion and romance of the Troubadour, the poignancy of the crown of thorns and the rich colour of spilt blood. Like the rose, the music that depicts or venerates Mary is varied.
Under leading Australian Early Music interpreter Gary Ekkel, Schola Cantorum of Melbourne traces that imagery through chant, song and motet. The programme moves from Pérotin and the Llibre Vermell, through Renaissance settings by Ockeghem, Clemens non Papa, Guerrero, Victoria and Dering, to Praetorius’s Magnificat and five Marian antiphons by Jan Dismas Zelenka.
Reviews
…The high point of the music-making here is the spirited performance of five Marian antiphons by Jan Dismas Zelenka, a Bohemian composer working in baroque Dresden.
For quiet meditation, pure moving music portraying the life of the Virgin Mary is beautifully captured by Schola Cantorum
nicely programmed ... an enjoyably 'real' performance and a most pleasant disc.
Artists
Gary Ekkel
Gary Ekkel is a leading Australian interpreter of choral and Early Music.
Schola Cantorum of Melbourne
Schola Cantorum of Melbourne has established a reputation for presenting sacred music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque together with Gregorian chant in historical and innovative contexts.
Audio preview
Tracks
- Ex semine Abrahe / Ex semine Rosa / [Ex semine] Pérotin 3:08
- O Virgo splendens (Anonymous) 4:42
- Alma Redemptoris Mater (Gregorian Chant) 1:37
- Ave Regina caelorum (Gregorian Chant) 1:44
- Regina caeli (Gregorian Chant) 1:41
- Salve Regina (Gregorian Chant) 2:50
- Ave maris stella John Dunstable 3:29
- Alma Redemptoris Mater Johannes Ockeghem 4:48
- O Maria, vernans rosa Clemens non Papa 8:22
- 1:12
- 4:11
- Salve Regina Tomás Luis de Victoria 4:16
- Ave Virgo gloriosa Richard Dering 2:42
- Magnificat Hieronymus Praetorius 6:45
- Alma Redemptoris Mater Jan Dismas Zelenka 2:03
- Ave Regina caelorum (i) Jan Dismas Zelenka 2:05
- Ave Regina caelorum (ii) Jan Dismas Zelenka 1:57
- Regina caeli Jan Dismas Zelenka 2:29
- Salve Regina Jan Dismas Zelenka 1:48
Ave Maria (Gregorian Chant)
Performers
- Schola Cantorum of Melbourne
- Gary Ekkel
- Ross Mitchell · tracks 15 and 19
- Fiona Furphy · tracks 15–19
- Elizabeth Anderson · chamber organ · tracks 15–19
Composers
Hieronymus Praetorius
Hieronymus Praetorius composed a Magnificat included in a sacred programme honouring the Virgin Mary.
Jan Dismas Zelenka
Jan Dismas Zelenka wrote Baroque sacred music of striking harmonic inventiveness and contrapuntal mastery: masses, litanies, psalms and Marian antiphons whose passion still startles in performance.
John Dunstable
John Dunstable's surviving music is sacred and vocal: isorhythmic motets, mass movements and Marian antiphons built on full triadic harmony, with a liking for thirds and sixths that marked the English manner of the early fifteenth century.
Francisco Guerrero
Francisco Guerrero (1528–1599) was a Spanish Renaissance composer and Catholic priest, admired for sacred motets and masses as well as secular songs that long outlived him in cathedral and court repertory.
Johannes Ockeghem
Johannes Ockeghem wrote masses, motets and chansons at the centre of early Renaissance polyphony. Surviving works include canonic and freely composed masses and Marian motets whose independent voices and wide-ranging bass lines shape the Franco-Flemish sound.
Clemens non Papa
Clemens non Papa’s motets are high Renaissance polyphony at full stretch: Marian devotion in O Maria, vernans rosa, Christmas wonder in the six-voice O magnum mysterium, and the stark grief of Vox in Rama.
Tomás Luis de Victoria
Tomás Luis de Victoria wrote almost exclusively sacred polyphonic music to Latin texts: motets, Marian antiphons and Holy Week offices whose intensity and direct emotional line set him among the principal voices of the late Renaissance.
Where to listen
O Rose So Red is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.
O Rose So Red is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.
Product details
- Catalogue number
- MD 3209
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 61 minutes 49 seconds
- Recording Engineer
- Martin Wright
- Editing Engineer
- Vaughan McAlley
- Venue
- Xavier College Chapel
- Release date
- 1998
- Musical work
copyright - © 1998 Move Records
- Sound recording
copyright - ℗ 1998 Move Records
- Categories
- Choral, Early music
- Genres
- Early Music, Choral & Sacred
- Barcode
- EAN 9314574320923
Related recordings
The Litanies of St. Francis Xavier
A generous 2-CD set of Jan Dismas Zelenka’s liturgical music from the Schola Cantorum of Melbourne: the Litaniae Xaverianae, five Vespers psalms, the Magnificat in D and the Alma Redemptoris Mater.