Pierre de la Rue. Masses — The Sound and the Fury
[12.9.2018]
500th Anniversary of his death
medieval.org Remarks
http://frabernardo.com/?portfolio=la-rue-masses-the-sound-and-the-fury#tab-id-2
Pierre de La Rue (c. 1460 – 1518)
A
Missa Paschale a 5
Missa ista est speciosa a 4
B
Missa L’Homme armé a 4
Missa pro fidelibus defunctis a 4 et 5
the sound and the fury
ALESSANDRO CARMIGNANI [countertenor]
JOHN POTTER | CHRISTIAN WEGMANN [tenor]
CHRISTIAN M. SCHMIDT | WILHELM SCHWINGHAMMER [bass]
fb 1810455
2 CD
EAN 4260307431587
to be released in November 2018
http://frabernardo.com/
Pierre de la Rue is one of the most fascinating and yet most elusive
members of the supremely talented generation of composers from around
1500. Apart from his will tentatively suggesting Tournai as his
birthplace, we know nothing definite about his early years; any
identification as the singer Peter van der Straten (the Dutch equivalent
of the name Pierre de la Rue), active in The Netherlands and Germany
between 1469/70 and 1492/93 has been put into question with good reason.
On the other hand, we know a great deal about the last twenty-six
years of his life. La Rue became a member of the Burgundian Habsburg
court chapel in service of Philip the Fair and subsequently his widow
Joanna of Castile and finally his sister Margaret of Austria, sometime
between 1489 and 15th November 1492 (the first recorded mention of his
name). He passed the final years of his life, from 1516 to 20th November
1518 in Kortrijk, where he benefited from an ecclesiastical sinecure.
La Rue’s personality also remains elusive; not even the slightest
anecdote gives any hint, unlike the cases of Busnois, Isaac or Josquin.
We only know from his epitaph that he was devout, charitable and “chaste
and free of the sins of Venus” (castus et a Veneris crimine mundus).
That may well be true, for La Rue made his name with sacred music and
there is no trace of the frivolous, dubious or obscene texts which his
contemporaries were wont to set amongst his secular songs. The
melancholic tone prevalent in many of his pieces can best be understood
as part of the representational politics of his last employer Margaret
of Austria, who owed her powerful position as Regent of the Netherlands
to her status as a double widow. Margaret consciously emphasised her
widowed condition which permeated the whole court with an atmosphere of
mourning and melancholy. But there are certainly other aspects to La
Rue’s music.
[12.9.2018]
http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/remarks.html
29 December 2018
Todd M. McComb
———
Perhaps there are more items that'll be appearing, particularly
if they were recorded only this year, but the 500th anniversary of
La Rue's death has at least brought a relatively small but high
quality set of releases, in particular the Beauty
Farm double album from early in the year, half the fine
Requiem disc from Diabolus in
Musica, and now another double album of
masses from The Sound and the Fury. (It still appears as though
the latter has stopped meeting as an ensemble, as the recording
itself actually dates from 2013, i.e. to shortly after the
Pipelare double album that had been their
climactic issue.)
Whereas Beauty Farm's program consisted entirely
of four-part cycles, however, The Sound and the Fury devote a (small)
majority of the program to five-part settings — all based on
monophonic material, though. In particular, whereas the second
disc reprises the virtuosic program (of thirty years ago now) by
Ensemble Clément Janequin, the
first is perhaps more successful, providing striking & polished
second (in both cases, as it happens) interpretations of both the
Missa Paschale & Ista est speciosa (both in five
voices, sung here one to a part): The Easter Mass is actually a
later piece than the Christmas cycle included in the recent Beauty
Farm set, and that much more restrained technically. (The notes
suggest that it might be too severe to be successful, but I've found
it to be quite successful since first hearing it by Ars Antiqua of
Paris — in an interpretation that continues to draw a surprising
amount of bile from the general public, but more on that in the
next entry.)
The Virgin Mass — one of a significant handful
by La Rue — presents an even more exuberant, even sparkling
setting, and is a real high point itself. In contrast, the second
disc seems a little less accomplished interpretation-wise, but does
reprise the Missa L'homme armé after a rather long
interval, and moreover attempts the Requiem at pitch. Both
end up a bit murky (including the low parts in the L'homme
armé) — & do recall that Visse's group had
been supported by organ, helping to bolster what was a relatively
coherent interpretation for the time.
(One might also remark that
another L'homme armé setting, as attributed by Meconi,
remains unrecorded. It's a later, canonic work, and one of only a
few La Rue cycles that isn't recorded at this point. I might note
that none of the individual mass movements has been recorded,
however, which might not seem curious given the preoccupation with
full cycles, but then many movements have appeared as extracts
anyway....)
So whereas the previous SATF La
Rue album presented later technical tour de forces, here after
the relatively youthful Missa L'homme armé, they've
presented relatively straightforward (albeit still challenging)
mature settings on plainchant themes. And so this disc was added
to my personal list.
[3.1.2019]