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The Huelgas Ensemble, under the leadership of Paul Van Nevel, brings us an ambitious recording of Dufay thirteen isorhythmic motets. These significant pieces reflect the fifteenth-century musical shift from dense polyphonic textures to more homophonic writing and an increasing emphasis on clarity of text. The motets feature ingenious structural symbolism, which is usually hidden in the presentation of the cantus firmus (the “fixed melody” that served as the basis of a composition), or the numbers of strophes, lines, and so on. Helpfully, the liner notes include brief instructions as to how to listen to these intricate works in order to hear these structural relationships and the puzzles that they contain. The Huelgas Ensemble opted for a combination of voices and instruments; sounds of recorders, sackbuts, and viele seamlessly interweave with vocal lines. The instruments play the cantus firmus or simply replace some of the other texted parts, thus making the sung text more comprehensible. The delivery of the intricate melismatic passages is excellent throughout the recording, and the majestic flow of the polyphony is on occasion dramatically broken by dissonance that explores some of the harshest sounds of which the instruments are capable. The ensemble, due to its consideable musical sensitivity, manages to bring out an array of emotions in music that is often perceived to be based on pure mathematical rationalism. This is especially evident in Nuper rosarum flores and Apostolo glorioso, the performances of which delightfully evoke the grandeur of the monumental occasions for which they were composed. Zak Ozmo |
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