Under the direction of Lucien Kandel, Ensemble Musica Nova from Lyon has dedicated itself for a number of years already to the rediscovery of early music, from the earliest polyphonic settings up to works of the Baroque. The ensemble’s new CD Se congie prens contains secular chansons by Josquin Desprez about the grief and sorrow of love, as well as a lamentation on the painful loss of the great master Ockeghem. The music comes from the sixteenth-century printed collection Le septiesme liure, contenant vingt & qvatre chansons a cincq et a six parties (“Seventh Book, containing twenty-four five- and six-part chansons”), which was published some twenty years after the composer’s death, and thus gives evidence of the dissemination of Josquin’s music throughout Europe. The chapel of Beaune Monastery, with its wooden vault typical of Burgundy, provides for the extraordinary acoustics that make audible the filigree polyphonic structures of Josquin’s music.
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