lunes, 4 de febrero de 2013

The Choir Project al día [04-II-2013]

Josquin des Prez [c.1450/55-1521]: Planxit autem David a 4.
The Binchois Consort - Andrew Kirkman.
The power of pain.


    Andrew Kirkman wrotes about Josquin and this piece:
"The reputation of Josquin Des prés cast a long shadow after his death in 1521. Demand for his music, particularly in Germany, far outstripped supply, leading to the widespread reattribution to Josquin of pieces by other composers. Thus Georg Forster could famously recall in 1540 hearing ‘ … a certain eminent man saying that, now that Josquin is dead, he is putting out more works than when he was alive’. Yet if some of the pieces bearing Josquin’s name in these late sources look unlikely to say the least, others, more plausibly ascribed to lesser-known masters elsewhere, relate closely in terms of style to more verifiably authentic pieces. In considering these pieces, today sitting on the fringe of the Josquin ‘canon’, we should not forget that many of them had passed muster as genuine Josquin in the eyes of the most eminent aficionados of their day, men whose perceptions of Josquin, expressed in treatises and prefaces, form the bedrock of our understanding of him today.

    This disc gives you the chance to judge for yourself: pieces whose places in the Josquin canon are as firm as seems possible in the present state of knowledge are set against others that, though widely assumed to be by Josquin in the sixteenth century, are now more plausibly assigned to others. Along with these pieces are others that are ascribed unambiguously to composers who, though less celebrated than Josquin both now and in the early sixteenth century, were capable nonetheless of rising, on at least some occasions, to heights comparable with those scaled by their better-known contemporary. Whatever the (considerable) financial incentive of printing spurious works under Josquin’s name, to ascribe a piece by someone else to Josquin may often also have represented a ‘seal of approval’, a sign of a high level of perceived quality. And, whatever the relations between our aesthetic perceptions and those of the mid-sixteenth century, listeners will surely agree that the pieces presented here – whether by Josquin himself or by a member of his ‘company’ – share not just stylistic common ground but also a high level of musical inspiration.

    If Planxit autem David, a setting of David’s lament over his dead sons, strikes a tone to our ears less of lamenting than of considered contemplation, the eloquence of its text setting, with each elegantly sculpted phrase set off from the next, is unmistakable. In a famous description, the mid-sixteenth-century German theorist Heinrich Glarean commented that ‘ … throughout this entire song there has been preserved the mood appropriate to the mourner, who at first is wont to cry out frequently, and then, turning gradually to melancholy complaints, to murmur subduedly and presently to subside, and sometimes, when emotion breaks forth anew, to raise his voice again and to emit a cry; all these things we see observed very beautifully in this song, just as it is also apparent to the observing. Nor is there anything in this song that is not worthy of its composer. He has everywhere expressed most wonderfully the mood of lamenting …’.".

    For me, Josquin is one of the best composers in the History of Music, and it is probably the best to put music to pain -"le douleur" for the French-.
This piece, as usual in Josquin music, it's for four parts -in this case, Josquin it's probably the best for put music in these parts-, but the evocative power is immense. The pain is almost palpable, physical here. The emotion is really stunnig, really worldly.

    The performance is very good, with male voices only. Technically brilliant, expressiveness is the highlight of this recording, completing an excellent album.
 

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