Search - Sequentia :: English Songs of the Middle Ages - Sequentia

English Songs of the Middle Ages - Sequentia
Sequentia
English Songs of the Middle Ages - Sequentia
Genres: Dance & Electronic, Special Interest, Pop, Classical
 
  •  Track Listings (13) - Disc #1

If you're looking for medieval songs in English, you'll find a disappointing number of surviving manuscripts--not even enough to make up a Top 40. Among the 20 or so pieces that remain are tantalizing hints at the richne...  more »

     
?

Larger Image

CD Details

All Artists: Sequentia
Title: English Songs of the Middle Ages - Sequentia
Members Wishing: 5
Total Copies: 0
Label: RCA
Release Date: 12/3/1992
Genres: Dance & Electronic, Special Interest, Pop, Classical
Styles: Vocal Pop, Opera & Classical Vocal, Chamber Music, Historical Periods, Baroque (c.1600-1750), Early Music
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 054727701924

Synopsis

Amazon.com
If you're looking for medieval songs in English, you'll find a disappointing number of surviving manuscripts--not even enough to make up a Top 40. Among the 20 or so pieces that remain are tantalizing hints at the richness and attractiveness of this long-vanished body of repertoire. The singers and instrumentalists of the early music group Sequentia are happy to tantalize us, and these 13 songs--including the classic "Bryd one brere" (Bird on briar), the familiar carol "Edi be thu, heven-queene," and several enticing instrumental numbers that sound almost like Scottish reels--remind us that not all medieval music resided in cloisters and cathedrals. --David Vernier

Similarly Requested CDs

 

CD Reviews

Available,,, for a Huge Price!
Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 04/03/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Middle English poems were mostly written to be sung or at least chanted with instrumental back-up, in the manner of the troubadours. However, fewer than two dozen poems in an English dialect rather thah in Norman French have survived with musical sources. Sequentia has chosen nine of them to perform on this CD, and the results are extremely pleasing to the ear and intuitively authentic. Nobody approaches Benjamin Bagby in scholarship concerning the earliest repertoires of European music, and fortunately for us Bagby is a superb musician with a compelling bariton voice well suited for such songs. Can anybody declare with adamant certainty that what Sequentia performs is close to what an English listener heard in 1200? Of course not, but Sequentia offers a plausible combination of sound scholarship and musical talent.



The language sung on this CD is recognizably English, but you won't easily grasp the meaning without looking at the texts, with trnsaltions into modern English, German, and French. I urge you to read the poems first in modern English, then in Middle English, and THEN listen to Sequentia's performance of them, one at a time. After you "know" them a bit, you can always load them on your iPod and take a springtime walk in the nearest oak woods. Two of the songs - Fuweles in the frith & Bryd one brere - are in fact about birdsongs on such a walk. Four songs are religious, and two others are laments over the world's futility. Three of the songs are duets in "close" harmony, among the earliest of harmonic music. Most of the others are accompanied by authentic instruments of the Middle Ages: small harps, fiddle (vielle), and on one track by a "symphonia," the prototype of the French vielle au roux and the Swedish nyckelharpa, instruments that produce a constant drone pitch while allowing melodic playing with a small keyboard. Margriet Tindemanns is perhaps the very best "fiddler" since the War of the Roses, and shows her virtuosity on four instrumental tracks, including one that sounds amazingly like a Swedish folkdance. Bagby is the harper, and he too gets to show what dazzling music can be made with lap-sized harp.



Even if the price for this rare CD is prohibitive, I hope you'll become acquainted with Sequentia's other performances on CD and DVD. If you're ever walking in my neighborhood and see graffiti declaring Sequentia Rules, you'll know who wrote it."