Tonus Peregrinus is a group of expert singers who come together once in awhile to attack a special project, this one being Léonin/Pérotin: Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Naxos' early music series. Any attempt to perform or record twelfth century polyphony requires some ingenuity in preparing a text that remains musical, yet makes liturgical sense: the well-known manuscript sources for polyphonic Notre Dame Repertoire do not contain the whole prescription for performance. Tonus Peregrinus, under the direction of ...
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Tonus Peregrinus is a group of expert singers who come together once in awhile to attack a special project, this one being Léonin/Pérotin: Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Naxos' early music series. Any attempt to perform or record twelfth century polyphony requires some ingenuity in preparing a text that remains musical, yet makes liturgical sense: the well-known manuscript sources for polyphonic Notre Dame Repertoire do not contain the whole prescription for performance. Tonus Peregrinus, under the direction of Antony Pitts, weaves together related strands of monophonic chant, two- and four-part textures, and information gleaned from teaching manuals of the time to create a wholly satisfactory blend of what sources tell us about this temporally remote musical genre. Tonus Peregrinus emphasizes the importance of skilled solo singers in this literature by inaugurating the disc with an outstanding rendering of Perotin's monophonic conductus setting of Beata viscera, sung magnificently by...
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