From Darkness into Light — Musica Secreta
Antoine Brumel | The Complete Lamentations of Jeremiah for Good Friday

[1.12.2019]


medieval.org | obsidianrecords.co.uk | musicasecreta.com

Obsidian 719
Release: 1st Nov 2019

Musica Secreta, the UK’s premier female-voice early music ensemble, releases a new recording based on a major new discovery, the complete setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah for Good Friday by Antoine Brumel, one of the most celebrated composers of the Renaissance.   

Brumel’s Lamentations have been known, performed, and recorded for many years in a much abbreviated form of two verses and the refrain, “Jerusalem, convertere." The additional seventeen verses, which which were found hiding in plain sight in a sixteenth-century manuscript by Musica Secreta’s co-director Laurie Stras, reveal a monumental setting that is both intricate in its detail and imposing in its formal construction; a masterpiece brought from darkness into light.

This complete set of Brumel’s Lamentations was preserved for centuries in a manuscript that was not copied for display, nor for a great noble chapel; it has no illuminations, and virtually no composer ascriptions to lead the curious towards its musical treasures. But its copyist, an obscure friar, was a different kind of master, leaving tiny details in the decorations that leap out at the reader like direct messages from the past. He left another manuscript, copied for a Florentine convent, that is filled with tiny inscriptions and portraits of the nuns, and the music it contains gives us a similar aural portrait of the nuns’ daily life. The second half of the disc brings the music of this second manuscript into focus, with gems by Josquin des Prez and Loyset Compère sitting alongside the anonymous beauty of works that decorated the nuns’ worship throughout the year.

— obsidianrecords.co.uk

[1.12.2019]

[1.12.2019]

medieval.org Remarks

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/remarks.html
20 November 2019
Todd M. McComb

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Another new musical discovery from the era (returning to last week's entry on the Leuven Chansonnier as a touchstone) is the complete Lamentations by Brumel, which musicologist Laurie Stras apparently stumbled upon recently in a library in Italy.

Stras is associated with the ensemble Musica Secreta, which I remember from e.g. their Luzzaschi program of almost twenty years ago, but they've remained active, mostly around Renaissance or Baroque repertory associated with women & in Italy. Their new program, focusing on c.1500 Franco-Flemish polyphony, From Darkness Into Light, thus seems like something of a departure, although it also concerns Italian sources. In fact, the interpretations of these works are appealing, projecting an almost Italianate lightness that can seem dance-like at times, yet rejecting an "angelic" sort of vocal presentation.

(And note that any potential incongruity between lamenting & dancing is answered by various traditional funerary dances around the world. It's not that human movement is antithetical to mourning, then, but about the sort of movement involved....)

There's also support for lower parts from the organ, but this doesn't interfere with textural clarity. And while the other brief pieces have their interest, the impetus for the album was obviously the Brumel, which had previously existed in only a much shorter version: These Lamentations appear to herald the upcoming Italian madrigal, forging a "sacred drama" presented in "acts" rather than a liturgy oriented on ritual performativity. The result thus continues to mark Brumel as anticipating later developments, here in a highly motivic proto-"operatic" sort of work (that could be seen as completely refiguring the medieval passion play — although Brumel probably never knew such music).

And although the glimpse (& accomplishment) of later sixteenth century style here isn't a priority for me, there's little doubt that this signature work can become relatively popular, particularly among people who value notions of "Renaissance" far more than they do the pre-modern per se.... Whereas Brumel already had such a reputation, it's perhaps (now) most strongly illustrated by this impressive cycle.



[1.12.2019]