Cantigas de Santa Maria - Clemencic Consort

Ensemble: Clemencic Consort
Album: Troubadours / Cantigas De Santa Maria (CD3)
Video: E Codex
  / musicamedievale  
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This 2021 is the anniversary of the 800 years from the birth of Alfonso X El Sabio. To celebrate him, this year I'll share many versions of his Cantigas! This is the third video about it, you can easily find the others on the channel.
This third version of the Cantigas is from the Clemencic Consort, one of my three favorite ensembles for medieval music. As always, Clemencic's conducting prefers to approach historical accuracy with courageous and often not easily accessible choices for a not accustomed ear to medieval music. The musicians who accompany him in this first volume are among the best with whom Clemencic has worked over the years including René Zosso on vocals and hurdy-gurdy and soprano Pilar Figueras.
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Alfonso X was born in 1221, he was King of the Romans, of Castile and León. His father was Ferdinand III, a liberal man called "the Saint" and the "King of religions" as during his reign he managed to make Christians, Muslims and Jews coexist in peace. His mother was Elisabetta Hohenstaufen, nephew of Frederick Barbarossa. From the sources that speak of his life we ​​know that in his youth Alfonso was surrounded by numerous paramours and politically helped his father in many military campaigns, but it was his love for Art that made him immortal with the nickname "El Sabio". In 1254 Alfonso endowed with many privileges the school of Salamanca, founded by his grandfather, and thanks to Pope Alexander IV, he obtained permission to make the school an international university allowing its graduates to teach anywhere, except Paris and Bologna. Alfonso tried to bring together all the knowledge of his time in the language spoken by his subjects by founding the School of Translators of Toledo; the Muslim and Jewish sages of his court translated ancient Arabic and Hebrew works into Castilian. His scientific, historical and literary work was fundamental; promoted the drafting and publication of a series of authoritative texts in various fields of artistic and scientific culture such as the Alfonsine Tables: astronomical tables capable of providing the positions of the Sun, planets, stars and the dates of eclipses. He was also an excellent poet and even the author of one of the first treatises on chess. However, it was Music that handed it over to legend thanks to the collection of the famous Cantigas de Santa Maria, monophonic songs of the XIII cent. now preserved in Madrid and Florence, containing an enormous number of compositions and representations of musical instruments and players. The outset of these compositions can be traced back to the troubadour art, which were so successful as to induce Alfonso X to use both the language and the form. Marian devotion was particularly in vogue in this century, the collection sees the participation of aristocrats and courtiers, bourgeois, friars, clerics and jesters of humble origins, but protected in the courts. King Alfonso himself composed cántigas, some of which incite poets and jesters to dedicate their efforts and inspiration to the “Santa Dama”. In addition to the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Cantigas de Amigo, popular, melodious and melancholic, also spread in that period, showing some contact with the Mozarabic kharge in Arabic-Hebrew composed in the XI cent.. The work has great importance from a triple point of view: literary, musical and pictorial. Alfonso X inherited from his father Fernando III his musical chapel which brought together interpreters and composers of various cultures and who formed part of the alphonsine court, similar to his School of translators or scriptorium regio. He seems to be surrounded by them in some miniatures. The melodies are influenced by Gregorian monody, popular lyric and troubadour songs. The Codices of the Escorial Library are adorned and profuse with miniatures, fundamental for the reconstruction of 13th century musical instruments: flutes, hurdy-gurdy, psaltery, lute, vielle, cítara, guiterne, harp, castañuelas, bagpipes, dulzaine...
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1 Prologue - Porque Trobar
2 Cantiga 2 - Muito Devemos Varoes
3 Cantiga 30 - Muito Valuera Máis
4 Cantiga 264 - Pois Äos Seus Que Ama
5 Cantigas 5 & 59 (Instrumentales)
6 Cantiga 47 - Virgen Santa Maria, Guárda-nos
7 Cantiga 322 (Instrumentale)
8 Cantiga 37 (Instrumentale)
9 Cantiga 340 - Virgen, Madre Gloriosa
10 Cantiga 166 (Instrumentale)
11 Cantiga 100 (Version I) - Santa Maria, Strela Do Dia
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Conductor, Liner Notes, Recorder, Crotales - René Clemencic
Hurdy Gurdy - René Zosso
Soprano Vocals - Pilar Figueras
Countertenor Vocals - Zeger Vandersteene
Baritone Vocals - Pedro Liendo
Bombarde, Chirimia Gigante - Alfred Hertel
Goblet Drum (Zarb) - Djamchid Chemirani
Vielle - Michael Dittrich
Zither (Tympanon), Carillon, Drum Tabor - Johann Krasser
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