This is a typically ambitious project from viol player and leader Jordi Savall and his Capella Reial de Catalunya and chamber group Hespčrion XXI, offering the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae ("Offices for Holy Week"), published by Tomás Luis de Victoria in Rome in 1585. The physical album includes two large booklets, for the texts are weighty enough to require one of their own. What's included are the Lamentations of Jeremiah and Tenebrae Responsories that other composers have set, introductory antiphons for Matins, psalm ...
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This is a typically ambitious project from viol player and leader Jordi Savall and his Capella Reial de Catalunya and chamber group Hespčrion XXI, offering the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae ("Offices for Holy Week"), published by Tomás Luis de Victoria in Rome in 1585. The physical album includes two large booklets, for the texts are weighty enough to require one of their own. What's included are the Lamentations of Jeremiah and Tenebrae Responsories that other composers have set, introductory antiphons for Matins, psalm settings, hymns, chant, and instrumental interludes. The work gives an excellent feel for how these types of Renaissance music, so often performed separately, were used as part of a larger entity. Savall energetically contends that the Offices are to be regarded as a single work, a major creative effort, and generally, the music lives up to his claim; the austere language of most of the set broadens toward the end as the festivities reach their climax. That language is a...
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