Early Music

A New Year’s Hymn: Music of Praetorius, Scheidt, and Bach

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Happy New Year! As we embark on another exciting year of music, keep your high quality headphones or stereo system handy. Reserve a few quiet moments each day for deep, attentive listening. Share your comments below, explore the archive, and share your favorite pieces with friends. The wonders of the internet and recording technology allow us to get together every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We have a vast amount of music at …

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Orlande de Lassus’ “Prophetiae Sibyllarum”: Ancient Mystic Voices

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In mystical writings, the Ancient Greek Sibyls foresaw the coming of Christ. These oracles are included among the prophets Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Their poetic verses inspired the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus to write Prophetiae Sibyllarum some time around 1555. The work is a collection of twelve brief motets which follow an opening prologue. This is music filled with chromaticism and harmonic adventure, anticipating the audacious madrigals of …

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Joyful Sounds of Praise: Five Musical Settings of Psalm 150

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Today marks the 1,000th post of The Listeners’ Club. In celebration of this milestone, I want to thank our growing community of readers and subscribers, and all who take time to comment and share this incredible music with friends. Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power. Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him according to His abundant greatness. Praise Him with the blast of the …

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Léonin, Pérotin, and the Birth of Polyphony at Notre Dame

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Why did the devastating fire at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral capture such intense worldwide attention this week? One reason is because of the way Notre Dame connects us to the past by way of nearly a thousand years of history. The stones of this iconic structure, which Victor Hugo described in 1831 as “a vast symphony in stone,” have presided over great plagues, the turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoléon Bonaparte’s self-coronation, and the …

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Michael Praetorius: Four Renaissance Dances, Magnificat

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It is believed that the German Renaissance composer, Michael Praetorius, was born on this day in 1571. In a strange coincidence, he died on the same date fifty years later in 1621. Active as an organist and music theorist, Praetorius was amazingly versatile. He published the four-volume Syntagma musicum, an influential treatise on music history and theory which remains a principal source for knowledge of 17th century music. Among his Lutheran chorale settings is …

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Exploring the Prolation Canon

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There is an interesting passage about four and a half minutes into the first movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 which may have caught your ear if you dropped by for Wednesday’s post: Did you hear that wandering, chromatic line which begins in the violins? Two additional lower string voices enter in succession with the same line at consecutively slower rates of speed. For a moment, before the episode is cut off by the …

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New Release: Byrd Motets, Stephen Cleobury and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

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English Renaissance composer William Byrd (1540-1623) lived amid the Catholic-Protestant religious turmoil which spanned the reigns of monarchs Elizabeth I and James I. Byrd wrote music for Anglican church  services, yet for most of his life he remained a dissident Catholic. As organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral, his salary was suspended, perhaps because the Puritans found his organ and choral music to be too elaborately polyphonic. His over 110 Motets, published in …

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