Salve, Salve, Salve: Josquin’s Spanish Legacy Contrapunctus & Owen Rees

• Cristóbal de Morales (1500 - 1553):
• 1Jubilate Deo Omnis Terra05:30
• Traditional:
• 2Gaudeamus Omnes In Domino01:19
• Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548 - 1611): Missa Gaudeamus:
• 3Missa Gaudeamus: I. Kyrie03:58
• 4Missa Gaudeamus: II. Gloria07:00
• 5Missa Gaudeamus: III. Credo11:19
• Tomás Luis de Victoria:
• 6Salve Regina10:01
• Missa Gaudeamus:
• 7Missa Gaudeamus: IV. Sanctus05:53
• 8Missa Gaudeamus: V. Agnus04:55
• Francisco Guerrero (1528 - 1599):
• 9Ave Virgo Sanctissima04:05
• Traditional:
• 10Salve Regina (Chant)02:50
• Josquin Desprez (1450 - 1521):
• 11Salve Regina (Desprez)08:08
• Francisco Guerrero:
• 12Surge Propera, Amica Mea06:14
• Total Runtime01:11:12

Info for Salve, Salve, Salve: Josquin’s Spanish Legacy

Coupling powerful interpretations with path-breaking scholarship, Contrapunctus presents music by the best known composers as well as unfamiliar masterpieces. The group’s repertoire is drawn from England, the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal and Germany, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The scholarly facet of the group’s work – including the discovery of long-lost music and reconstructions of original performing contexts – allows audiences to experience the first performances of many works in modern times.

Owen Rees is both an acclaimed choral director and an internationally recognised scholar of Renaissance music, particularly from Spain, Portugal, and England. His scholarship consistently informs his performances in exciting and revelatory ways. He has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works, and he has played a leading role in revealing the glories of Portuguese Renaissance polyphony to an international audience. His interpretations have been acclaimed as ‘revelatory and even visionary’ (BBC Music Magazine) and as ‘rare examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to the listener’ (Gramophone).

During the 16th century, the music of Josquin Desprez became hugely sought after. Large quantities of his music were published in cathedral music books and instrumental anthologies (a huge step in this period of history). This inspired three of the greatest Spanish composers of this age – Morales, Guerrero and Victoria. In this new Signum recording, Contrapunctus and Owen Rees explore the repertoire which was produced as a result of this inspiration.

Victoria’s six-voice Salve regina, published in his debut collection of 1572, shows yet again the force of Josquin’s legacy among Spanish composers, and exemplifies more generally the desire of Renaissance musicians to demonstrate their musical lineage through emulation of the works and techniques of renowned masters, and indeed their aspirations to surpass them. Victoria takes his cue from Josquin in using the ‘Salve’ motif as an ostinato, and in the second part of the setting (beginning with the words ‘Ad te suspiramus’) he retains Josquin’s technique of alternating between two pitch-levels for the motto; because Victoria gives the ostinato to one of his two highest voices, in this section of the piece every other statement stands out boldly at the top of the texture as had not been the case in Josquin’s Salve. But in borrowing Josquin’s idea Victoria goes much further than had his forerunner, giving us his own tour de force of prodigious contrapuntal skill. First, he adds a second ostinato motif, ‘mater misericordiae’, sung by an inner part; secondly, he constantly varies the overlap between this and the ‘Salve’ motto, to show the various ways in which the two can work together; and thirdly, he not only transposes the ‘Salve’ motto between two pitches (as had Josquin) but transposes the ‘mater misericordiae’ motto between three pitch-levels, so that we end up with an extraordinary jigsaw involving a myriad of relationships between the two. While all of this is going on, the listener is aware not of the contrapuntal showing off, but of beautifully shaped and powerfully emotive polyphonic writing. (from notes by Owen Rees 2020)

Contrapunctus
Owen Rees, conductor

Contrapunctus
Coupling powerful interpretations with path-breaking scholarship, Contrapunctus presents music by the best known composers as well as unfamiliar masterpieces. The group’s repertoire is drawn from England, the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal and Germany, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The scholarly facet of the group’s work – including the discovery of long-lost music and reconstructions of original performing contexts – allows audiences to experience the first performances of many works in modern times. Since its foundation in 2010, the group has appeared in many of the world's most prominent music festivals – the Utrecht Early Music Festival, the AMUZ Festival in Antwerp, the Festival van Vlaanderen in Mechelen, the Eboræ Musica Festival and Setúbal Festival in Portugal, the concert series at De Bijloke in Ghent, and in the Martin Randall Festival of Spanish Music (Seville Cathedral), and alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Contrapunctus is Vocal Consort in Residence at the University of Oxford. The group's debut disc 'Libera nos: The Cry of the Oppressed' was released on the Signum Label in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Gramophone Early Music Award 2014. Contrapunctus' next recording project centres on the Baldwin Tudor Partbooks. A series of discs on the Signum label will present music from these partbooks. The first album 'In the Midst of Life' featuring motets on the theme of mortality, was released in February 2015 to great critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Gramophone Early Music Award 2015, named Album of the Week in The Sunday Times, The Week, and on BBC Radio 3 CD Review. It was Editor's Choice in Gramophone and Choral and Song Choice in BBC Music Magazine.

This album contains no booklet.