Lasso: Prophetiae Sibyllarum, Christmas Motets

Cordes, Manfred;
Weser-Renaissance Bremen

CPO 777 468-2

Orlando di Lasso once again can be experienced as one of the most important masters of Renaissance music. His Prophetiae Sibyllarum, a work unique in the whole of music history, occupies the center of this new Weser-Renaissance production. This setting of the oracles of the sibyls and the composer's experiments with the chromatic mode stand alone. Departing from his customary, polyphonically through-imitative compositional style, here Lasso systematically limits himself to a four-part, mostly homophonic-syllabic writing style while employing a tonal system with a relevance for modern music that was only just beginning to be discovered during the middle of the sixteenth century. Since all the texts have the Christmas message as their theme and the effect of the chromatic tonal connections cannot hold the hearer in constant suspense, a combination of the sibyl settings with Lasso's motets to texts for Christmas naturally suggested itself. Here we hear the master as we know him – as an always resourceful inventor of complex structures

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

CPO

02-02-2010

761203746828