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Track(s) taken from SIGCD295

Quomodo cantabimus

composer
8vv
author of text
Psalm 137

Gallicantus, Gabriel Crouch (conductor)
Recording details: January 2011
St Michael's Church, Summertown, Oxford, United Kingdom
Produced by Adrian Peacock & Nigel Short
Engineered by Andrew Mellor & Dave Rowell
Release date: June 2012
Total duration: 6 minutes 28 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Contrapunctus, Owen Rees (conductor)
Jesus College Choir Cambridge, Mark Williams (conductor)

Reviews

'Gallicantus explores Byrd's fascinating 'personal musical exchange' with Philippe de Monte in The Word Unspoken. Six Byrd motets sit alongside five by the Italian who, like Richafort, deserves to step out from under the shadow cast by giant contemporaries.The singing is beyond exemplary: deeply felt, tenderly phrased, perfectly balanced, with the most profound understanding, seemingly bred in the bone' (Choir & Organ)

'As a specialist early-music consort, Gallicantus are perfectly placed here to compare the works of William Byrd and Philippe de Monte—the one a Catholic recusant fortunate in the favour of Elizabeth I for his simpler Protestant pieces, the other a Flemish sympathiser and correspondent. Gallicantus render exquisitely the ornate verses of Byrd's Cantiones Sacrae, their interwoven timbres cascading in noble equilibrium; but the most direct comparison is between de Monte's 'Superflumina Babylonis' and Byrd's 'Quomodo cantabimus', both derived from Psalm 136, which subsequently gave the world Boney M's deathless 'Rivers of Babylon'. In this case at least, music is the winner, whichever one prefers' (The Independent)

'Culminating in beautiful performances of Byrd and Monte's famous collaboration (one might almost say commiseration) Super flumina Babylonis/Quomodo cantabimus, this album brings together some of Byrd's most agonized musical utterances with some surprisingly melancholy works by Monte' (Early Music Review)» More
In 1584 Byrd engaged in a dialogue in motet form with Philippe de Monte (1521-1603). De Monte had travelled to England as a singer in the Royal chapel choir forming part of the Spanish King Philip II’s entourage as he celebrated his marriage to Queen Mary. The 11-year-old Byrd is believed to have met him on that occasion. Thirty years later de Monte, now employed in Prague, sent Byrd his 8-part motet Super flumina Babylonis, a setting of the first three verses of a well-known song of captivity, Psalm 137 (136 in the Vulgate). Its meaning ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Zion’ would not have been lost on Byrd, who reciprocated by setting the next four verses of the same psalm, also in eight parts and in the same key. The translation of Quomodo cantabimus (How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land) can leave little doubt about Byrd’s feelings as a recusant Catholic in the newly-protestant England.

from notes by Phillip Borg-Wheeler © 2016

Other albums featuring this work

Byrd & Britten: Choral works
Studio Master: SIGCD481Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Libera nos - The Cry of the Oppressed
SIGCD338Download only
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