Palestrina, Lassus & Ashewell: La Quinta essentia

Featuring

Paul Van Nevel
Huelgas Ensemble
Orlando di Lasso
Thomas Ashewell
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

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Recording & Production

The recording venue, a 19th-century building with three open storeys, was chosen for its acoustic properties, which enhanced the Renaissance works.

Compositional Technique

Ashewell's Missa 'Ave Maria' showcases a complex, typically English 'flamboyant Gothic' contrapuntal texture, including the use of 'false relations' (different accidentals for the same note in two voices).

Composer Biography

Thomas Ashewell, a precursor to Palestrina and Lassus, was a versatile musician who taught plainchant, polyphony, faburden, discant, organ, and 'countre' at Durham Cathedral.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Palestrina's style, working in Rome under the Vatican, was characterized by classical counterpoint, a transparent language, and a pure a cappella style, reflecting the Catholic Church's doctrines.

Compositional Technique

Lassus's mass on this album is a 'parody mass,' a 16th-century technique where a pre-existing work, in this case Nicolas Gombert's chanson "Tous les regretz," forms the basis for a new composition.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Lassus, employed at the Bavarian court in Munich, embraced a more 'terrestrial' art with a preference for profane magnificence and exuberant polyphony, even in sacred works.