Tag: Jean Mouton

The Renaissance Princes Of Heartbreak: The Gesualdo Six, Wigmore Hall, 23 June 2024

This was a wonderful concert and a lovely way for me and Janie to chill at the end of the weekend.

When I first saw The Gesualdo Six, coincidentally six years ago, I described them as the hottest boy band in the early music vocal consort world

Fading: The Hour Is At Hand, The Gesualdo Six, St John’s Smith Square, 28 March 2018

But now, having heard them and seen them some more, I realise that The Gesualdo Six are now beyond boy band. They are to 15th/16th century Chansons de Regretz what Taylor Swift is to the 21st century heartbreak song.

Further, the Ges-Ges Boys, much like Tay-Tay, are mastering the art of social media management. When Owain Park announced from the stage that “you can find us on TikTok”, I wondered:

  • whether he was joking,
  • how many members of the Wigmore hall audience understood what he meant by TikTok,
  • was I the only person in the Hall (other than the Ges-Ges Crew) who had a TikTok account.

I can’t be sure about the answer to the second and third question, but I can confirm that Owain Park wasn’t joking.

@thegesualdosix

Listen to this famous motet by Thomas Tallis. ‘If ye love me’ was composed in the 16th-century and is a perfect example of the enduring power of Renaissance polyphony. #singing #classicalmusic #music #choir #musician #church #song #cinematic #g6 #choral #classical #oldisgold #ancientmusic #polyphony #earlymusic #renaissance #fyp #foryoupage #fypシ #tallis

♬ original sound – The Gesualdo Six

They are also very good at merchandising. On my 2018 visit Owain tempted me to buy a pre-release version of their first album – English Motets (which includes the track embedded above from TikTok, as it happens). This time he persuaded me to be among the first to buy Queen Of Hearts, the latest album.

To be honest, I don’t really need much persuading and I can confirm that the Gesualdo Six recordings are excellent.

The Gesualdo team themselves staffed the merchandise and payment gadgets during the interval, chatting kindly (and at some cases at length) with the patrons who queued up to buy the recordings. I believe they did that all again at the end of the gig.

I wondered to myself whether Taylor Swift was doing this at her Wembley Stadium concerts – I have heard that she engages with her audience like no other. Possibly Tay-Tay is still there at Wembley, selling, signing and chatting.

So what did we hear at The Gesualdo Six gig, I hear you cry. Here is the stub from the Wigmore Hall website posting for this concert.

Almost all the stuff we heard was from this new Queen of Hearts album. Did I mention that it is available from The Gesualdo Six website – click here. We are loving listening to the albums. I also bought Josquin’s Legacy to add to my collection.

Before the interval we heard:

  • Antoine Brumel (c.1450-1512) Sub tuum praesidium (pub. 1520)
  • Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521) O virgo prudentissima
  • Loyset Compère (c.1445-1518) Plaine d’ennuy/Anima mea
  • Antoine Brumel Sicut Lilium
  • Jean Mouton (c.1459-1522) Ave Maria … virgo serena (pub. c.1520)
  • Johannes Prioris (fl. c.1485-1512) Dulcis amica Dei (pub. 1508)
  • Owain Park (b.1993) Prière pour Marie (2023)
  • Jean Lhéritier (c.1480-1551) Sub tuum presidium a6

After the interval:

  • Josquin des Prez Petite camusette (pub. 1545)
  • Antoine de Févin (c.1470-1511) Fors seulement (pub. c.1515)
  • Jean Mouton De tous regretz
  • Anon Se je souspire/Ecce iterum attributed to Margaret of
  • Austria
  • Costanzo Festa (c.1485-1545) Quis dabit oculis (1514)
  • Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade (b.1989) Plaisir n’ai plus Commissioned by The Gesualdo Six (2023)
  • Johannes Prioris Consommo la vita mia
  • Nicolas Gombert (c.1495-1560) Tous les regretz (pub. 1544)

Below is a video of them singing Josquin’s O Virgo Prudentissima – one of the pieces we heard.

This group is the real deal. Janie and I floated home after the concert.

Josquin’s Legacy, The Gesualdo Six, Wigmore Hall, 10 October 2022

The Gesualdo Six photo by Sprague-Coolidge, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Gesualdo Six is a wonderful Renaissance choir. However, I had a numerical problem with its promotional material when I first saw them in 2018…

Fading: The Hour Is At Hand, The Gesualdo Six, St John’s Smith Square, 28 March 2018

…which seems to be unresolved despite my pleas. The publicity material for The Gesualdo Six regularly shows seven people.

I’m not really one to talk, having recently been part of a six-person works-outing winning quiz combo known as “The FS Club 7”. But readers, many of whom are early music lovers, will surely know that the name is not a numerical claim, but a pun on the early music (i.e. some of it released even before the turn of the 21st century) pop combo, S Club 7.

But it is not my purpose in this piece to “bring it all back” in the matter of S Club 7’s ancient exploits, but rather to assess the wonderful world of Josquin’s Legacy, as sung by The Gesualdo Six.

While Josquin’s mostly late 15th century music formed the core of the concert, there were also pieces by his contemporaries, Jean Mouton & Antoine Brumel, plus several works by lesser known composers who followed a generation or so later.

It was a mixture of sacred music (both new and old testament liturgy) plus several regret/deploration pieces commemorating the death of fellow composers or patrons.

Here is a link to The Gesualdo’s promo vid for the album which this concert was surely (in part) aiming to help promulgate.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall concert programme.

The concert was a BBC Lunchtime concert, which, if you are reading this within a month of the broadcast, can still be heard on the BBC Sounds App – here.

The Wigmore Hall also streamed this one, so you can watch and listen here.

This was Janie’s first opportunity to see/hear The Gesualdo Six live and she was much taken with the group.

“The Gesualdo Six: great with singing, not so special when it comes to numbers.”

Not too bad a tag line.

The Tallis Scholars: Isaac and Mouton, Wigmore Hall, 9 March 2017

Been going a very long time

Heinrich Isaac died 500 years ago this month. Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have been around for most of that time…

…OK, not really, but they have been around since the mid 1970s, which is one heck of a long time. What a superb and professional troupe they are.

The concert was billed as being Isaac and Mouton, but in truth it was almost all about Isaac.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for the concert we saw/heard. The centrepiece of the first half of the concert was Isaac’s wonderful Missa de apostolis. The second half had more, shorter works; motets, including one by Mouton but the rest all by Isaac.

We spotted Michael Heseltine in the audience a few rows behind us, when we returned from the interval. A bit of a coincidence, as Janie was seeing Angela the next day; Angela was Hesser’s right hand person, back in the day.

We’ve seen The Tallis Scholars before and I have a few of their recordings of Renaissance and Early Baroque music: Brumel, Gombert and Taverner, all excellent. Indeed we listened to this Taverner one – click here – when we got home. 

But before getting home we were treated to a delightful encore of Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, a choral work attributed to (and probably the best known work of) Isaac. It was one of the greatest hits of the Renaissance. In truth, Isaac almost certainly didn’t write the words and possibly didn’t even write the music. But Isaac did live in Innsbruck at one time and did leave the place, perhaps in sorrow as suggested by the song, c1485. That was around the same time as, in Blighty,  Dick The Shit was feeding worms underneath a forthcoming Leicestershire car park and the Tudor era was just kicking off.

We’re talking nearly 100 years ahead of Greensleeves publication, so Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen might well have been at Number One in the Renaissance charts for some 5000 weeks.

In these circumstances, it seemed only sensible for me to get my head around the words, chords and music – click here.

I’ve been working on that lovely song periodically since. It’ll go down an absolute storm on my baroq-ulele. I’m nowhere near as adept as The Tallis Scholars, needless to say, but they are nowhere near as Baroque-and-roll as me.  You never know, my version might just be the summer hit sensation of 2017.

Here are the King’s Singers giving it a go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z3pg7Ocmx8