Oh Flanders Free: Music Of The Flemish Renaissance

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Cat No: 8554516

Release Date: 04 January 2000

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943451625

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Oh Flanders Free

Description
The dominant position of Franco-Flemish composers in the musical worldof the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is testimony not only to the culturalclimate of Northern France and the Low Countries in that period but also to theexample set by Burgundy. Established as a dukedom under Philip the Bold in1363, the territory grew through inheritance and dynastic marriages to includethe most prosperous region of Europe, Flanders and Brabant, while the marriagein 1477 of the Burgundian heiress Marie, after the death of her father Charlesthe Bold, to Maximilian of Austria saw Burgundy revert to France and the LowCountries to the Habsburgs, The court of Burgundy in its heyday set an exampleof magnificence and luxury to the other courts of Europe, attracting artists ofthe highest distinction, In England Henry VII, victorious in the War of theRoses, was among those rulers who sought to emulate Burgundy, importing artistsof all kinds from the Low Countries, a tradition that continued under hissuccessor, while the states of Northern Italy fell under a similar influence.The present album provides a brief conspectus of Franco-Flemish musicalinfluence in the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth. Itopens with the familiar Introit from the Gregorian Requiem. Thisis followed by two excerpts from the Songbook of Zeghere van Male, copiedfor the Bruges merchant of that name in 1542, an anonymous instrumental Preludiumand a polyphonic setting of the brief text for the living and the dead, LausDeo.Thomas Fabri was a pupil in Paris of the French composer Jean de Noyers,otherwise known as Johannes Tapissier, who had served as a chamber musician toPhilip the Bold of Burgundy. In 1412 Fabri was appointed choirmaster at theCathedral of St Donatian in Bruges, a city then at the height of itscosmopolitan prosperity. His Ach Vlaendere vrie ('Oh Flanders free') isone of his two surviving three-voice secular songs.A native of the northern French town of Busne, from which he takes hisname, Antoine Busnois may have been a pupil of Ockeghem in Paris. He wassubsequently in the service of Charles the Bold of Burgundy and, after thelatter's death in 1477, of the Duke's daughter, Marie of Burgundy, until herdeath in Bruges five years later. Busnois died in 1492 in the same city, wherehe was employed as master of choristers at the church of St Sauveur. Hisfour-voice Alleluya is largely harmonic in conception.There follows an instrumental piece attributed to the Italian Jewishcomposer Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, a dancing-master whose writing on the artis of considerable importance and enjoyed wide contemporary popularity for itspractical advice. The dance Falla con misuras has the alternative title Bassacastiglia. It is a basse-danse, a court dance that, with itssucceeding mesures, reached its height of fashion at the Burgundiancourt.Contemporaries coupled the name of Johannes Ockeghem with that of hissupposed pupil Busnois. Probably a native of Flanders, he served at Notr
Tracklisting