Listen & tracks
1 of 12 tracks have a preview · 12 works · 72:47
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1 Istanpitta Ghaetta Anonymous 6:58
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2 Latin Kingdoms Anonymous 8:11
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3 Stella Splendens Anonymous 3:37
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4 Los set goyts Anonymous 2:46
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5 Cantiga 50 Anonymous 7:37
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6 Ecco la Primavera Francesco Landini 1:16
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7 Tels rit au main qui au soir pleure Guillaume de Machaut 3:49
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8 Saladin Anonymous 11:25
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9 Crusader's Lament Anonymous 5:55
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10 A mon dan soy esforsieus Guiraut Riquier 4:16
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11 The Silk Road Anonymous 7:54
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12 Istanpitta Belicha Anonymous 9:03
Dances of the Middle Ages, monophonic Hebrew melodies and Spanish monophonic songs are heard on percussion, recorder and mediæval string instruments.
The programme ranges across Italian istanpittas, Spanish songs from the Llibre Vermell and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Hebrew niggunim, and works by Landini, Machaut and Guiraut Riquier. Improvisatory brackets evoke the Crusades and the Silk Road itself, with oud, rebec, vielle, lute, hurdy-gurdy and darabouka among the colours of the ensemble.
Reviews
... there is a sheer joy to the music making ... the playing is first rate.
Melbourne seems so filled by talented musicians of every type that it seems inconceivable that Melburnians need ever buy CDs by anybody but the people who live next door or in the next suburb. A fanciful suggestion? Not if you look at the number and variety of local musicians who have been recorded by Move Records during the last twenty years or more. Not if you add the productions of many other labels, small and large, forever giving opportunities to our most talented people. If Melbourne is not musical Utopia, it's not the fault of the record companies. It's our fault; yours and mine, O Melbournians. No matter what happens, we buy the overseas stuff instead of records like Silk and Spice by Cantigas. These five musicians from Melbourne play between them at least thirteen instruments, including the oud, the rebec, and the hurdy-gurdy. With these instruments from medieval European and Arabic times, they recreate the sounds of the towns and highways of nearly a millennium ago, without sounding in any way old fashioned. Instead of sounding precious, Silk and Spice has all the excitement of music you have been waiting to hear all your life, but have never quite met before.
Artists
Cantigas
ensemble
Cantigas recreate the music of the Middle Ages with authentic compositions which use techniques of mediaeval performance practice such as countermelodies, drones, rhythm parts and creative improvisation.
Francesco Landini
composer
Francesco Landini (c. 1325–1397) was a Florentine composer, poet, organist and singer, and a central figure of the Italian Trecento. Blind from childhood, he left a large body of madrigals and ballate that dominate the surviving sources of fourteenth-century Italian polyphony.
Guillaume de Machaut
composer
Guillaume de Machaut's songs of courtly love sit at the heart of fourteenth-century French music: virelais, ballades and rondeaux where longing, grace and intricate rhyme meet the rhythmic daring of the ars nova.
Guiraut Riquier
composer
Digital booklet
Digital booklet Notes, texts and credits — read online or download the PDF Download the PDFPerformers
- Cantigas · ensemble
- Zana Clarke · recorders, rebec
- Caroline Downer · vielle, hurdy-gurdy
- Philip Gunter · oud
- Martin Greet · lute
- Michael Hall · percussion
Technical credits
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Producer
Martin Wright
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Venue
Move Records Studio
Details
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 72 minutes 47 seconds
- Release date
- 1993
- Categories
- Classical, Early music
- Musical work copyright
- © 1993 Move Records
- Sound recording copyright
- ℗ 1993 Move Records
- Catalogue
- MD 3137
- EAN
- 9314574313727
More to explore
Courts in Colour
Traditional melodies from four important courts of the Middle Ages: Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Gaon of Tiberias, Saladin of Egypt, and Alfonso X of Castile and León. Cantigas bring them to life on authentic mediæval instruments.
Travellers' Tapestry
Cantigas weave mediæval and folk-based music from Europe, Asia and the Middle East into a tapestry of trade-route exchange, played on recorder, percussion and early string instruments.
Bards of Faith and Passion
Jim Minchin sets poems by writers at play or at odds with eternity: soul-poet lyrics across the centuries, from anonymous Latin verse and the metaphysicals to Yeats, Shakespeare and living voices.
A Thousand Beautiful and Graceful Inventions
Subtitled ‘The glorious age of medieval and renaissance canons’, this programme of late Middle Ages and Early Modern choral music is sung by the University of Queensland Chamber Singers under Graeme Morton. The illustrated booklet has programme notes by Denis Collins and Jason Stoessel, with complete texts.
Walsingham
Renowned Australian lutenist Rosemary Hodgson’s Walsingham gathers Elizabethan lute variations on a sacred ballad into a contemplative Marian rondo of mysticism and pilgrimage.
Two
Two brings together Marais Project founding members Jennifer Eriksson, viola da gamba, and Tommie Andersson, gallichon, theorbo and baroque guitar. Each plays alternate brackets of solos before they join in a splendid suite by Marin Marais.