The Whole Music Experience

Stile Antico Song of Songs Harmonia Mundi It's hard for many folks to imagine the Bible as literary text, much less containing erotic passages. It's even harder for some religious people, mystics excluded, to conceive of any sensuality coming from the Big Book. Yet, The Song of Songs , composed by King Solomon, reads as erotic text for some, and for others, as Marian text. During the European Renaissance, several esteemed composers, set this erotic poem to polyphonic church music. The list of composers included, Palestrina, Gombert, Clemens, Victoria and others. The emerging English Early Music choir, Stile Antico performs work of many of these composers' interpretation of The Song of Songs . As I'm writing this review, I'm suffering from a migraine, not to mention, stress from having to re-type this blog entry. In the past, I was able to heal migraines while listening to renaissance polyphony. I'm hoping I will achieve the same results listen...

  Ballet & Requiem Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chicago Symphony Chorus With Jessica Rivera and Bernard Haitink Ravel Daphnis et Chloe/Poulenc Gloria CSO-Resound/Harmonia Mundi It’s odd to find a requiem and an Impressionist ballet sharing the same disc. However, Francis Poulenc’s Gloria, with its fanfare, and Copeland-esqe orchestration, not to mention vocal arrangement, hardly resembles a requiem—at least not the kind we have grown accustom. The liner notes mention that Poulenc, (“a bad boy of French music”), composed the requiem for a fellow composer, Pierre-Octave Ferroud who was beheaded in an automobile accident. Also in the liner notes, “Over the next 25 years, as Poulenc examined his own beliefs and confronted the Roman Catholicism of his childhood, he developed a unique religious musical style, one that confirms and, in turn questions the significance of faith.” The six movements are cited as both “introspective and breezy.” And the soprano role ...