Search - Medieval, Voxfire, Samela Aird Beasom :: Songs to the Virgin

"Songs to the Virgin: A Medieval Meditation" is an elegant mixture of chant and polyphony, from gentle and joyous to ethereal and soaring, celebrating medieval Christianity's most cherished feminine ideal. Performing "a cappella" in a space of crystalline resonance, the three soprano voices of Voxfire spin silvery threads of pure sound, intertwining into one. The music is a reflection of the mystical quality of the Middle Ages, where boundaries between the mundane and the celestial quite often are blurred. The texts entreat and praise the Virgin, probably the most fervently adored subject of medieval Europe, whose story could be the very definition of the word "mystical." Gregorian chants include several 'Alleluias' and the four "Marian" antiphons, all from the 10th century. Settings of these popular texts from later centuries include the beautiful 'Alma redemptoris mater' by English composer John Dunstable (c. 1370-1453) and 'Ave regina celorum/Alma redemptoris mater' from the late 13th to 14th century, a double motet, having two different simultaneous texts. Another double motet introduces Perotin (c. 1160-1220), called the greatest composer of "discant," the practice of writing parts against an existing plainsong (chant melody). Also represented here is the great Hildegard of Bingen, the early 12th-century mystic, abbess, diplomat, poet, natural historian, composer and visionary, writer of some of the most beautiful hymns and sequences from the Middle Ages. Anonymous pieces include the perennially favorite 'Magnificat', an ancient Byzantine canticle still used in Roman Catholic liturgy, exclaiming Mary?s reaction to Angel Gabriel?s portentous message. Because knowledge of medieval music and its performance is incomplete, modern-day interpreters have many options and decisions to make. In all its arrangements of this music, Voxfire seeks a balance between likely practices from the Middle Ages and evocative sounds that can bring some of that era?s mystery to our 21st-century ears.