The peripatetic English-born conductor Paul Hillier, who has led many a superb performance of a cappella Renaissance music in both Europe and the U.S., now lives in Denmark and here joins forces with the 16-member choir Ars Nova Copenhagen. Hillier often performs Renaissance masses in a historically authentic way, with smaller pieces interspersed among its sections as they would have been in an actual celebration of the mass (composers for the most part set only the unchanging Ordinary sections of the mass, while chants or ...
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The peripatetic English-born conductor Paul Hillier, who has led many a superb performance of a cappella Renaissance music in both Europe and the U.S., now lives in Denmark and here joins forces with the 16-member choir Ars Nova Copenhagen. Hillier often performs Renaissance masses in a historically authentic way, with smaller pieces interspersed among its sections as they would have been in an actual celebration of the mass (composers for the most part set only the unchanging Ordinary sections of the mass, while chants or other polyphonic compositions were used in connection with the seasonally variable Proper sections). The effectiveness of this in a modern context varies according to the work involved, but Hillier's practice has rarely been more appealing than on this disc. The large work performed here is the Western Wind Mass of John Taverner, a cantus firmus mass based on a secular song that was exceptionally sexy in an English context ("Christ, if my love were in my arms/And I in my bed again")....
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