Recorded at the Shaker Village,
Sabbathday Lake, Maine,
June/July 2000
Glissando CD 779 020-2
High among the many achievements of the Spanish King Alfonso X, called “El Sabio” — the Wise — King of Castille (1221-1284) is the superb collection of more than 400 sacred songs to the Virgin Mary, the celebrated Cantigas de Santa Maria.
The region now referred to as the south of France was in the Middle Ages known as Proenza (that is, Provence), and was truly a crucible of creative activity that was to change for ever the relationship between men…
Like all true Latins, the French have always adored a good show. The splendors of opera and ballet at the court of seventeenth-century Versailles were famous all over Europe in their day — and this century’s “early music” revival in France…
Want to hear some wonderful songs that the real Shakespeare probably knew? Check out this wonderful Boston Camerata CD, an anthology of ravishing vocal and instrumental pieces from Elizabethan England, featured in…
Love is a game, and every game has its rules. In medieval France, the rules are new and give the woman, the dame, a novel status. And the game of love, thus played out with the consent of all those involved, takes…
As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and “cultured” along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music…
Certain angels are believed to intercede for humankind in times of need…
“You’ll have trouble sitting still…the kind of dramatic energy normally felt only in live performance”
— David Vernier, Amazon.com
The ages-old manuscript, that lay in the vaults of the Benediktbeuren monastery in Bavaria, did not begin with the usual devotions. On the contrary, the opening song — meant as some satirical mime, or a dance perhaps…
