The male vocal quartet Orlando Consort and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir share a commitment to the same repertoires: the very old and the very new. The earliest and latest pieces on this collaborative CD are separated by about 650 years, Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame, probably written in the 1360s, and works by British composers Gavin Bryars and Tarik O'Regan in the twenty-first century. The program notes include a wonderful story from the 1930s, in which an audience member told the conductor after a ...
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The male vocal quartet Orlando Consort and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir share a commitment to the same repertoires: the very old and the very new. The earliest and latest pieces on this collaborative CD are separated by about 650 years, Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame, probably written in the 1360s, and works by British composers Gavin Bryars and Tarik O'Regan in the twenty-first century. The program notes include a wonderful story from the 1930s, in which an audience member told the conductor after a performance of the Machaut mass, "We don't want to hear dodecaphonic music, we want to hear old music." For ears accustomed only to music as early as the Baroque, Machaut's unfamiliar harmonies, voice leading, and cadences can sound exceedingly odd. For anyone willing, Machaut's music can transport the listener to a very different world, a culture we might find had very little in common with our own, and that kind of experience can be bracing. The performance of the Machaut by the...
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