Tag Archives: early music

With all its art, Matthew Martin's new piece creates an impression of voices speaking directly to the listener. The subject may be the Virgin Mary, but what we hear seems devilishly knowing.

"This is one of the reasons I’m so drawn to early music – it provides the temporal distance necessary to transform what we inherit into something new."

The Norwegian lutenist makes this 400-year-old music sound vital through a mature, warmly expressive sensibility, even as he explicates these old "texts" through a prism of meticulous technique.

This collaboration between vocal ensemble Blue Heron and composer Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol is as beautiful as it is tricky to describe.

Music from the court of Charles XI of Sweden, "a deliberate crossroads of European music and musicians."

The eight singers of the a cappella ensemble brought out every part in a selection complex contrapuntal music written or compiled in 16th-century Scotland.

With a sound that mixed plangency and purity, and an almost palpable fearlessness, the Fourth Wall Ensemble did this wonderful music justice.

The choral ensemble dusts off the 'Missa pro defunctis' of 16th-century composer Charles d'Argentil – the earliest extant polyphonic setting of the Requiem Mass.

Ockeghem marks the pinnacle of the Renaissance style, and the great Clarion Choir brought his music to life on the pinnacle of Manhattan.

Jordi Savall and his early music ensemble looped back to the popular music of the 16th and 17th centuries in concert, while a new album offers modern piano responses to ancient music.