Ensemble Organum – Missa Gotica

Album : Missa Gotica

Artist : Marcel Pérès & Ensemble Organum

Release date : 2009

Number of discs : 1

Label : Zig Zag Territoires

Genre : Medieval

Total time : 00:51:04

Tracklist:

Anon., Ms Toulouse

1. Kyrie
   Anon., Ms Barcelona – Apt
2. Gloria
   Gregorian
3. Allelulia: Veni Sancte Spiritus
   Anon., Ms Barcelona – Apt
4. Credo
5. Preface
   Anon., Ms Toulouse
6. Sanctus
   Gregorian
7. Offertory: Confirma hoc deus
   Anon., Ms Toulouse
8. Agnus Dei
   Gregorian
9. Introit: Spiritus domini
   Anon., Ms Toulouse
10. Ite missa est – Deo Gratias 

Missa Gotica is a recreation of an anonymous polyphonic mass from the fourteenth century - the time when the Papacy was relocated to Avignon. A major motive for this recording by the highly respected, and uncompromising, Ensemble Organum (six accomplished singers - including director Marcel Pérès) is to demonstrate the significant changes in style of such music at a time of equally significant developments in the liturgy.

Despite the calamitous nature of the fourteenth century (the Black Death, the Schism and European-wide devastation, war and poverty), its musicians, artists, writers and indeed its clerics were confident and proud of their new - and still emerging - abilities. In musical composition, for example, new understanding of arithmetic enabled more precise and expressive structures to be produced. These fitted the greater enthusiasm for observation and what we would now call 'scientific' advances; these enabled stronger and more spectacular architectural construction, for example. The tremendous belief of such makers in their world and in their powers to represent and reflect it is mirrored in the immense energy of the music on this CD.

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