It's not so often that recordings of Renaissance music focus on an individual city, so this release from the Orlando Consort is welcome and has been rewarded with commercial success. Florence in the 15th century gained the magnificence that still draws visitors today, and it was home to various types of musical creativity, much of it coming from the best Netherlandish composers Medici money could buy. Some of those composers -- Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, and Heinrich Isaac -- are represented here. Dufay was called ...
Read More
It's not so often that recordings of Renaissance music focus on an individual city, so this release from the Orlando Consort is welcome and has been rewarded with commercial success. Florence in the 15th century gained the magnificence that still draws visitors today, and it was home to various types of musical creativity, much of it coming from the best Netherlandish composers Medici money could buy. Some of those composers -- Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, and Heinrich Isaac -- are represented here. Dufay was called upon to write music for the dedication of the great Duomo that still attracts tourist throngs today, and he responded with the motet Nuper rosarum flores, a work dripping with tradition (it harks back to the multiple texts and the isorhythms of the medieval era) and seemingly loaded with numerological symbolism (musicologists disagree as to exactly how much). This work is not really suited to performance by a vocal quartet like the Orlando Consort, but there are also smaller pieces...
Read Less
