It was weddings for which the nobility of the 16th century really pulled out all the stops. Musical plays, dances, paintings, even board games -- everything was commissioned anew from the workshops that courts maintained. Le nozze in Baviera (The Wedding in Bavaria) is a reconstruction of music intended for the 1568 wedding of Renate of Lorraine and Wilhelm V of Bavaria. It's a bit more than speculative; Ensemble Origo and director Eric Rice rely on an eyewitness who described the proceedings, which took place over 15 days, ...
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It was weddings for which the nobility of the 16th century really pulled out all the stops. Musical plays, dances, paintings, even board games -- everything was commissioned anew from the workshops that courts maintained. Le nozze in Baviera (The Wedding in Bavaria) is a reconstruction of music intended for the 1568 wedding of Renate of Lorraine and Wilhelm V of Bavaria. It's a bit more than speculative; Ensemble Origo and director Eric Rice rely on an eyewitness who described the proceedings, which took place over 15 days, and even talked about instrumentation (sacred pieces here are accompanied by instruments), although he did not specify the actual pieces involved. Rice devised a four-part program intended to represent music that could have been performed. The first two parts each occupy a single track on the album and consist of a Te deum and a motet, Gratia sola dei, of Orlande de Lassus, both typical of the ceremonial uses of such music at the time. After that, when the wedding participants let...
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