Dufay & the Court of Savoy: Missa Se la face ay pale and other works

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Half a dozen recordings of Dufay's Missa Se la face are available but Kirkman's sweeps the board. …he employs just one singer per part, creating performances of great clarity, pliancy and historical... — BBC Music Magazine, March 2009, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 5th Jan 2009
Catalogue No: CDA67715
Label: Hyperion
Length: 71 minutes

Dufay: Missa Sancti Mauritii

Work length5:51

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

Movement 1. Introit. Venite benedicti

Track length5:51

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: Missa Se la face ay pale

Work length13:03

$2.20

$3.00

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

I. Kyrie

Track length3:36

$1.10

$1.50

II. Gloria

Track length9:27

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: Missa Sancti Mauritii

Work length11:55

$2.20

$3.00

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

Movement 2. Gradual. Gloriosus Deus

Track length6:05

$1.10

$1.50

Movement 3. Alleluia. Iudicabunt sancti

Track length5:50

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: Missa Se la face ay pale

Work length9:14

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

III. Credo

Track length9:14

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: Missa Sancti Mauritii

Work length4:15

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

Movement 4. Offertory. Mirabilis Deus

Track length4:15

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: Missa Se la face ay pale

Work length12:11

$2.20

$3.00

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

IV. Sanctus

Track length7:08

$1.10

$1.50

V. Agnus Dei

Track length5:03

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: Missa Sancti Mauritii

Work length2:18

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

Movement 5. Communion. Gaudete iusti

Track length2:18

$1.10

$1.50

Dufay: O tres piteulx / Omnes amici 'Lamentatio sancte matris ecclesie Constantinopolitane'

Work length3:30

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

Dufay: Se la face ay pale

Work length3:03

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

Dufay: Magnanime gentis

Work length6:36

$1.10

$1.50

The Binchois Consort
Andrew Kirkman

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About

The Binchois Consort’s first recordings of Dufay for Hyperion achieved iconic status, winning a Gramophone award along the way. Despite the proliferation of early music groups recording Dufay in their wake, the Binchois remain the ultimate musical authority on this great composer.

Their latest recording contains what many consider to be Dufay’s masterpiece. His Missa Se la face ay pale is one of the best known, and perhaps most revered, of all polyphonic masses. Indeed, it is a work of such renown that it enjoys a special kind of status among Renaissance mass cycles. Along with a handful of other such works, it has become a touchstone for the idea and structural design of the unified cantus firmus mass, a classic exemplification of the musical style and achievement of an era. The work is presented here, however, not as a five-movement sequence but in a more differentiated and perhaps more appropriate dramatic fashion, interspersed with music in a contrasting style for the Proper of the Mass (also five movements: Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, Communion). The programme is completed by two motets and the ballade on which the mass is based. This recording evokes in sound something of the cultural achievement and brilliance of the Court of Savoy at its first peak of maturity, during the middle decades of the fifteenth century. The musical works performed here complement and enrich the historical picture of the late-medieval and Renaissance duchy that can be gleaned from the archives, libraries and museums. Live sound vividly extends and deepens the scope of such a picture, just as does an appreciation of the geographical and architectural settings which are the physical stage for such cultural developments.

Reviews

March 2009

Half a dozen recordings of Dufay's Missa Se la face are available but Kirkman's sweeps the board. …he employs just one singer per part, creating performances of great clarity, pliancy and historical value. The sound is close and clean, lending a spare, translucent edge to the beautifully sung plainsong sections of the Alleluia Iudicabunt and the intricate textures of the Credo.

2010

Se la face ay pale remains Dufay's most approachable Mass – very much a tune with accompaniment, one that is assembled as though elegance of line was Dufay's main criterion of musical excellence.
And Andrew Kirkman chooses to treat it as such: at least, he essentially persuades the singers on the contratenor line to keep well down so that borrowed melody in the tenor can come through while allowing the top line to stand out as it must.
What the Binchois Consort do here sounds both transparent and natural. The balance is superb; and all lines are presented in a free and supple manner that projects the music very well. This is easy, effortless musicianship.
Meanwhile Kirkman intersperses the five Ordinary movements with movements for the Proper for St Maurice. Much of the music is in three or two voices only, so sounding different from the Missa Se la face ay pale and contrasting with it neatly. Only the glowing Offertory is in four voices. Metrical complexities in the Alleluia and in the Offertory add neat spice to the music.
Special credit here should be given to the soloists who sing the long and exposed duos: these have lines and phrases that seem to go on for ever, so they are astonishingly hard to sing, and these musicians do them marvellously.
To fill out the disc they perform three more Dufay pieces that can be associated with the court of Savoy: the song Se la face ay pale is heard in the rarer four-voice version that may not have anything to do with Dufay but is delightful and eminently worth hearing, especially in a spirited performance like this; the famous Lament forConstantinople, a touch less transparent than one might wish; and the motet Magnanime gentis, sounding as though it was done in a hurry at the end of an exhausting session.

March 2009

…the Binchois Consort… sounds both transparent and natural. The balance is superb; and all lines are presented in a free and supple manner that projects the music very well. This is easy, effortless musicianship.

Dufay & the Court of Savoy

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