The Huelgas Ensemble explores mostly unknown, exceptional repertoire from 14^th century England. The chosen works, both sacred and secular, were found in manuscripts in the libraries of Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Worcester, York and London.  (release 02/07/2021)

For several years the Huelgas Ensemble had been searching for a suitable place in which to establish its own festival. In 2019 the moment finally arrived: Talant, a small village situated at an altitude just a few kilometres from Dijon, the Burgundian capital, turned out to be the perfect setting - peaceful (no shops, cafés or restaurants), and with a Romanesque church endowed with heavenly accoustics.

The festival of seven concerts given by the Huelgas Ensemble during the Pentecost weekend was recorded by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. Consisting of a broad selection of works, this release offers a fascinating sound journey through the magical world of polyphony, and an aural document representing the three pillars of the festival: unknown repertoire, undeservedly obscure composers and experiments that fall outside the scope of the normal concert season.

In his constant search for unpublished works and forgotten composers, Paul Van Nevel invites us in this new album to discover a Requiem Mass for five voices composed in 1556 by Simone de Bonefont, canon and cantor at Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral.

This Missa pro mortuis can be considered as one of the high points of polyphonic vocal writing, encompassing all the characteristics of Franco-Flemish techniques at that time.

The richness of its polyphonic writing and its contrapuntal mastery are quite simply unheard of. As usual, the Huelgas Ensemble serves this new score in a masterly manner and delivers music of incredible luminous tranquillity.

The programme is enriched by four compositions by Franco-Flemish masters - which could have caught the ear of Simone de Bonefont - on one of the most profound texts of the Gregorian repertoire: Media vita in morte summus (In the midst of life we are in death).

This recording shows the three musical styles that coloured the aural environment of Christopher Columbus: the lively Italian strophic profane music from the homeland of his childhood; the Spanish love songs, with their unique melancholy, from the court of the Catholic Kings; and the Franco-Flemish virtuosic polyphony that Columbus surely heard during his last years at the Spanish court in Valladolid. The result is a wonderful discovery of the most famous Discoverer, illuminated by the beautiful voices of the Huelgas Ensemble.

In the artistic landscape of the Southern Netherlands, Theodoor van Loon (1581/82-1649) occupies a unique place, yet his name is virtually unknown to the general public. However, seventeenth-century authors were not sparing with their praise for this painter: 'Apelles of the Netherlands' (Erycius Puteanus 1612); 'Painter of excellent works' (abbot Geldolf van Rijckel 1631); 'A remarkable painter in his day' (Sanderus 1659); '[Painter with] high esteem' (Cornelis de Bie 1662).

Just as twentieth-century artists moved to New York and discovered their very own art scene, van Loon was deeply effected by Italian painting and by his contacts with circles of scholars in Rome, the then capital of art, where he stayed several times. The Eternal City, however, was also the seat of the papal power and van Loon was particularly interested in the avant-garde of post-Tridentine art. Indeed, though his oeuvre may be far less known than that of his rival Peter Paul Rubens, after his return to the Southern Netherlands van Loon played a barely overestimated role in formulating and spreading a modern pictorial aesthetic that could give shape to the spiritual renewal that the Catholic Church had in mind.

This programme highlights the musical environment of van Loon both in Rome and at the Brussels court of Albrecht and Isabella. For the first time, the chaplains in Brussels are assembled together at the time of van Loon: Géry Van Ghersem, Peter Philips, Nicolaus a Kempis, Giuseppe Zamponi and Pedro Rimonte. Van Loon's stay in Rome is illustrated with both works of the then ‘conservative’ style (Francesco Soriano, pupil of Palestrina) and of the new, aspiring class (Mazzocchi). And of special note is the fact that Giuseppe Zamponi was a fellow of van Loon’s in both Rome and Brussels!

The programme that Paul Van Nevel has created for this CD at the request of BOZAR is the ideal listening guide for discovering Theodoor van Loon's oeuvre.

“…The intelligence with which (this recording) has been put together and performed, designed to soundtrack the exhibition of van Loon in Brussels, but far too good to leave just to the art enthusiasts.”
Andrew McGregor, Record Review BBC Radio 3

This production came about with the support of the Flemish government.

Christophe Plantin (1520 – 1589), a prolific and highly influential member of his craft, is considered one of the most important printers and publishers of the 16th century. His extensive oeuvre includes religious, humanistic and scientific editions, as well as musical editions. For this recording Paul Van Nevel and his Huelgas Ensemble perform several of the most interesting works, offering an interpretation of this beautiful and varied music that sheds new light on the compelling heritage of Christophe Plantin.

Francesca Caccini (1587 - after 1641)
La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina
Balletto con prologo a tre scene - Libretto: Ferdinando Saracinelli
First recording of the complete opera including reconstructed instrumental dances

Paul Van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble have recorded the first opera ever composed by a woman, an operatic jewel from the early Baroque era.  Van Nevel has revised the score, providing accompaniment for each protagonist with individual colours and reconstructing all instrumental dances.  Above all, he has brought to the fore the polyphonic influence of the Renaissance and the dramatic influence of the Seconda pratica on this opera, revealing the transition from Renaissance to Baroque.  Richly expressive, with vivid recitatives, melodious arias and lively choral interjections, the opera was first performed by the Huelgas Ensemble in 2016 to an enthusiastic reception: "Such is the spell cast by this music that the listener almost forgets that this was once a gala opera for a state visit" (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

The Ear of the Huguenots: Music from the Time of the “St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre”
2017 the Huelgas Ensemble focusses on the great topic of the Reformation, in its anniversary year. 500 years ago the core values of Europe were shaken by profound changes. Changes that were not just of a religious nature but also political and cultural. Old ideals were both questioned and fiercely defended.
In 16^th century France the protestant milieu was intensely oppressed. The grisly culmination of this oppression came on the night of the 23^rd/24^th August 1572 with the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, during which thousands of Huguenots were killed in Paris. This extreme act of persecution sent shock waves through the whole of France. Nevertheless, or indeed therefore, the Huguenots developed their very own musical culture.
The programme consists of three parts:
1. Psalm music of the Huguenots for three to eight voices: Psalms by Claude Goudimel (c. 1515 - 1572), Jacques Mauduit (1557 - 1627) and Claude Le Jeune (c. 1530 - 1600).
2. The “Victors’ Response” (with the celebration of a mass!) of Pope Gregory XIII on receiving news of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 - 1594): Agnus Dei from the Missa “Ut re mi fa sol la” (for 6 & 7 voices), together with two pieces from the Roman Lauda repertoire.
3. Secular and sacred music from the Huguenot circle: works by Paschal de l'Estocart (1539 - after 1587),  Jean Servin (c. 1530 - 1596), Guillaume Costeley (c. 1530 - 1606) and Claude Le Jeune.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) : Missa da Capella a sei voci fatta sopra il motetto in illo tempore del Gomberti

These days we associate the name Claudio Monteverdi largely with the change in style of the early baroque, with its new theatrical approach to composition.  Monteverdi was, however, significantly more versatile, also occupying himself closely with the "prima prattica" - the Franco-Flemish polyphonic composition technique of his predecessors.  One of his key works in this style of composition (proving to his critics that he was also a virtuosic master of the technique) is his Missa da capella, printed by Ricciardo Armandino in 1610.  As the model for this mass Monteverdi chose a motet by one of his predecessors, Nicolas Gombert, who is widely regarded as one of the grand masters of imitative polyphony.  Monteverdi extracts 10 motifs from the aforementioned motet and reworks them into his own imitative web of polyphony.  As a result he avoids unnecessary and dull repetitions, indeed Monteverdi simply takes up where Gombert left off, developing his own motivic structures and sequences.
This programme sees these boundary-breaking mass movements contrasted with the preceding generation of composers, including works by Cesare Tudino (c.1530-1591/92), Nicola Vincentino (1511-1575), Giaches de Wert (1535-1596) and Luca Marenzio (1554-1599).  What one experiences is the fascinating contrast between a "conservative" Monteverdi and his progressive forerunners. 

The life of the Franco-Flemish polyphonist Firminus Caron is shrouded in mystery, and we know little about him except that he was probably born in Amiens in around 1440. And yet his works were already famous during his own lifetime and have survived in some of the most important music manuscripts of the second half ot the 15th century, including a number of the Vatican's principal choirbooks.
The Huelgas Ensemble compares and contrasts five movements from the composer's four-part cantus firmus Masses with four secular chansons and in that way provides an impressive demonstration of his exceptional individuality, imagination and variety.

Fado is the quintessential kind of Portuguese national vocal music.  An outpouring of the soul, it constitutes the musical heartbeat of Lisbon and is as much a part of the capital's dilapidated charm as its creaking trams and ancient house fronts.  The legendary fadista Antonio Rocha is one of the last singers to represent the true fado tradition.  He perfoms in O Faia, the famous atmospheric restaurant in the Bairro Alto, singing about a world of grand emotions and thrilling stories that can be entered even by those who do not speak Portuguese.

António Rocha, vocals

Fernando Silva, guitarra portuguesa

Paulo Ramos, viola

Paul Van Nevel, Producer

First the pure facts: Malheur me bat is a three-part rondeau that has survived in more than ten sources dating from the years between 1475 and 1530. It is the most famous example of a work in the Phrygian mode – the third of the eight church modes, the authentic mode on E. Its most striking features are its typical semitone interval from E to F that is often used even in final cadences; the absence of any chords on the fifth degree of the scale, B, as this would produce a tritone, B – F, the famous diabolus in musica; and the mode’s exclusively emotional character, a character described by Heinrich Glarean in 1547 as “religious because it arouses the emotion of plaintive lamentation”, while Gioseffo Zarlino, writing in 1558, claimed that it “makes listeners feel sad”. Other composers and theorists argued along similar lines. So far, so unspectacular. But the mystery already begins with the fact that in the surviving sources this particular work is ascribed to more than one composer. Some of the manuscripts leave the matter unresolved and give us no name at all, whereas others name the composer variously as “Malcort”, “Martini” and “Ockeghem”. In the case of the text, the confusion is even greater, for only the first three words,“Malheur me bat”, appear as an incipit at the start of the superius, while the sources in general leave us in doubt on this question, some of them not including this incipit at all. Essentially, therefore, nothing is known about the content of the rondeau. Crucially, the oldest surviving source, which dates from around 1475, does not have “Malheur me bat” as its incipit but “Dieu d’amors”. In the course of our researches we did not find a single song or poem that begins with one of these incipits. In short, the rondeau has kept its secret. Even more importantly, however, the rondeau is hidden away within works by other composers who have reworked either the superius “Malheur me bat”: a mystery or tenor part or both as a cantus firmus in their own music. These metamorphoses indicate that in its own day Malheur me bat must have been very well known. As for the original words, we have decided to include both Malheur me bat and Ô Dieu d’amours in our programme. Both of them date from the same period and both of them begin with words very close to the original incipits, with the result that they may well express the same idea in terms of their form and content. And yet here, too, no amount of research will ever clarify this matter. The present album sets out to identify the corpus delicti in terms of its complete text and what I can only call the “flight” of the superius and tenor, both of which have found refuge in these metamorphoses.

Paul Van Nevel
Translation: texthouse

CANTUS: Axelle Bernage, Sabine Lutzenberger, Katelijne Van Laethem
TENOR: Achim Schulz, Stefan Berghammer, Olivier Coiffet, Timothy Leigh Evans, Tom Phillips, Matthew Vine
BARITONANS: Frederik Sjollema
BASSUS: Tim Whiteley, Guillaume Olry
ARTISTIC LEADER: Paul Van Nevel

P&C 2015 Sony Music Entertainment Germany GmbH
Recorded: July 14 & 15 & 16, 2014, Église d’Écoyeux, France · Recording Producer, Editing & Mastering:
Markus Heiland, Tritonus Musikproduktion GmbH · Cover Photo: mauritius images · Artwork: [ec:ko] communications

A treasure-house of the grand master of sixteenth-century musical calligraphy, the choirbooks of Petrus Alamire contain some stupendous and hitherto unpublished polyphonic works. Through the hand of the fantastical humanist that was Alamire – famous as a “guardian of the books” and as a spy within the most influential courts of the Renaissance, including those of Marguerite of Austria in Malines, Henry VIII of England and Charles V – the Huelgas Ensemble and Paul Van Nevel trace a portrait of this brilliant humanist in a programme that will take you to the very heart of the secrets of Renaissance polyphony. From among these gems that are the prestigious choirbooks, the voices of Paul Van Nevel portray The Legacy of Petrus Alamire through the Sanctus and Agnus Dei of such exceptional composers as Sticheler in an echo of the divine Josquin.

DDD | Digipack Deluxe | Booklet: 36 pages | Texts in French, Dutch & English. Live recording at Antwerp’s St.-Paulus church (Belgium), on August 19th, 2015 during ‘Laus Polyphoniae – Petrus Alamire Festival’ (AMUZ). Sound & Balance Engineer, Recording, Editing & Mastering: Markus Heiland (TRITONIUS Musikproduktion GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany). Transcriptions: Paul Van Nevel | Executive producer: Cédric Hustinx | Production assistant: Mélanie Defize Cover: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. 6, 37v | All texts and translations ©kastafior 2015.

Cat. No.: CYP1673 | Barcode: 5412217016739
Cypres-Kastafior sprl. | 7, rue d’Alost | B-1000 Bruxelles
+32 2 213 36 65 | www.cypres-records.com

NEW DISCOVERY
Johannes Sticheler
Missa se j’avoye porpoin de veleur
5-6 Sanctus & Agnus Dei

You can listen to the music of the Huelgas Ensemble on Spotify.

This programme sees the Huelgas Ensemble break new ground and turn its attentions to contemporary music. The work, lasting nearly an hour, was initially conceived for 4 singers and 4 strings. In collaboration with Wolfgang Rihm and the Berliner Festspiele “Et lux” has now been reset for the Huelgas Ensemble, with doubled choir and string quartet. The work is based on the Requiem text of the liturgy, pieces of which are strewn across the opus. Huelgas is joined by the Minguet Quartett for this programme.
 
Huelgas Ensemble:
Axelle Bernage
Sabine Lutzenberger
Terry Wey
Achim Schulz
Stefan Berghammer
Matthew Vine
Tim Whiteley
Guillaume Olry
 
Minguet Quartett:
Ulrich Isfort: Violine I
Annette Reisinger: Violine II
Aroa Sorin: Viola
Matthias Diener: Violoncello

The Christmas story and the powerful images evoked by the narration of the birth in the stable, the exotic appearance of the Magi from the Orient and the shepherds' bucolic visit have been a source to the world's imagination throughout history.  The Huelgas Ensemble explores the fascinating and colorful repertoire by composers of five centuries reaching from the Franco-Flemish Renaissance polyphony to English Christmas Carols and Spanish Villancicos.

Francisco de Zurbarán was born in 1598 in Extremadura, but was educated in Seville, a cultural centre that at the time offered exposure to international influences and encounters. In Seville, he developed into a respected painter, receiving commissions from the religious authorities. His reputation gradually spread beyond the borders of Andalusia and reached as far as Madrid, where he was invited to the court of Philip IV.

Once he had completed his royal commissions, Zurbarán moved back to Seville, where he further developed his style. His works very much corresponded to the taste of his time and his success was so great that he even began to export to the New World. Seville, however, was in a downwards spiral; the city, moreover, was struck by an epidemic of bubonic plague. Its population was greatly depleted; orders became less frequent; and aesthetic tastes also changed.

Zurbarán finally returned to Madrid, where he would spend the last years of his life. There, he developed a more intimate, softer style, closer to that of the late baroque. He died there in 1664.

One of the most important recordings of Huelgas Ensemble in the last years!
More than 70 minutes of the most exciting English repertoire of the end of the 15th century.

Passionate cigar smoker and conductor Paul Van Nevel selected charming compositions that are brief sketches of the luxurious world of  the cigar between the 16th and 20th century.
They are superbly interpreted with a hint of irony and humor by the Huelgas Ensemble and evoke the timeless pleasure and relaxing atmosphere that cigar lovers all over the world still treasure to this day...

PraeBACHtorius presents a programme that illustrates the evolution of a living tradition in whiche the strenght of the simple chorale is reflected in the totally self-contained forms to which it inspired later generations.

This box is the reedition of 15 CDs, recorded by the Huelgas Ensemble between 1990 and 1998 for Sony-Vivarte. Most of these recordings were not available anymore in the music stores. This "Secret Labyrinth" shows the cooperation between Sony producer Wolf Erichson and Paul Van Nevel, that lead to a series of unique recordings with several international awards.

Michelangelo Rossi (1601-1656) was, in addition to an outstanding violonist and organist, one of the most significant composers of the Italian Renaissance period. Paul Van Nevel has discovered three of Rossi's instrumental works and thirteen of his ground-braking madrigals and presents them here for the world premiere recording with his award-winning Huelgas Esemble.

To download the original songtexts: click here

Paul Van Nevel and the Huelgas-Ensemble have collected the quintessence of a musical art. Their recording illustrates the three dominant styles of the Renaissance: the Roman school, Franco-Flemish polyphony, and English late Gothic. The chosen formal framework is the mass, and three of its greatest masters contribute to the programme: Lassus, ‘counterpoint on a human scale’, Palestrina, ‘the path of transcendence’, and Ashewell, ‘the irresistible appeal of virtuoso ornamentation’. A whole world recreated in sound!

While the latter half of the sixteenth century saw the first stirrings of the Baroque, this period also witnessed the creation of the finest cathedrals in sound, with their foundations in the distant Gothic era of music . . . Composers vied with each other in daring and ingenuity, presenting works with twelve, sixteen, twenty-four and even, in the case of Tallis's famous Spem in alium, forty different voices! The Huelgas Ensemble celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary with a spectacular selection of these works.

Special box at the occasion of the 35th aniversary of the Huelgas Ensemble, with the rerelease of three CD's that received the best reviews. CD1: Le chant de virgile - CD 2: Lamentationes de la renaissance  - CD 3: Requiem de Jean Richafort. Tracks: see the CD's below.

Alfonso Ferrabosco (1543-1588) 'Il Padre' has suffered a curious fate: he has long been neglected on record, yet in his own time he was the most eminent representative of a famous Bolognese musical dynasty. After emigrating to England at an early age, he spent most of his life in the service of Elizabeth I, earning the admiration of his peers. Though implicated in some distinctly murky affairs - could he have been a secret agent for the queen? - Ferrabosco was above all a musical genius, capable of equally felicitous expression in the motet, the madrigal or the polyphonic chanson.

Perhaps Jacobus de Kerle (1531/32-1591), contemporary and peer of Orlande de Lassus, Clemens non Papa and Philippe De Monte, needed a tireless pioneer of the calibre of Paul Van Nevel to rediscover him for the 21st century. This master of polyphony, who was active in Flanders, Italy and Germany before finally settling in Prague, left works of timeless beauty - as this CD will prove.

It was in seeking to set to music the emotions they found in literary texts and poems – imitar le parole – that the madrigalists of the early sixteenth century rediscovered the poetry of Francesco Petrarca. The rich imagery of his language provided the springboard for Orlande de Lassus, in particular, to show his mastery over a period of nearly forty years as one of the greatest composers of madrigals.

The cycle of 125 variations that Constanzo Festa (ca 1490-1545) composed on the 37-note cantus firmus 'La Spagna' is conceived on a scale unique during the Renaissance, and may justly be described as a compositional tour de force. Comparisions with Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations are inevitable. This CD offers a first recording of thirty-two of the variations in instrumental performances using two differently constituted ensembles.

We possess many works by Jean Richafort, but very little biographical information on the composer. In the sixteenth century he was the object of veneration and admiration. The great Ronsard himself spoke of him in the most enthusiastic terms, and most of his contemporaries - Mouton, Morales, Gombert, Palestrina - based Masses on his music.

Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565): music as the mirror of the text. The work of de Rore represent a milestone in the art of the renaissance, since for te first time the music and the emotions expressed by the text merge: the music 'is' the emotion and no longer merely a description of it. Or as the musicologist Alfred Einstein put it: "All madrigal music of the 16th century that lays  claim to serious dignity is dependent upon Rore. Lasso and Monte are inconceivable without him."

In this selection of settings by masters like Willaert and de Rore, among others, of the verse of Virgil, Horace and Catullus, Paul Van Nevel offers us, with the subtlety of perception and the rigorous but flexible attention to detail we have come to expect from him, another dazzling excursion into the rich and fascinating by ways of early Renaissance vocal music.

On this CD the Huelgas Ensemble and Paul Van Nevel offer the world premiere recording of this extraordinary mass for 24 voices by Padovano, a composer underestimated today but who was considered in 16th century Italy as "onde of the founders of modern music" (Galilei)... On the CD are presented two versions of the 24 part mass. Tracks 1-5: version 1 for vocal ensemble, 2 cornettos and bass trombone; tracks 6-10: version 2 for 3 voices and 21 instruments.

An exact contemporary of Monteverdi (they were born en died in the same years), the Bohemian Christophorus Demantius was a prodigiously inventive composer totally outside the Italian avant-garde movement heralded by his transalpine 'twin'. And yet, paradoxically enough, not unlike Gesualdo (perhaps even more autonomously), he explored new musical avenues with extraordinary ingenuity while remaining attached to the polyphonic style of the Renaissance. In this respect these highly festive 'Whitsun Vespers' are something like a sumptuous transition from the 'old' counterpoint of Lassus and Praetorius to the imminent innovations of Schein and Schütz.

In his Passion according to St. John, Rore created a masterpiece of plainchant elaboration in polyphony. Unlike other Passion settings of the period, this one sets the entire text, while carefully adhering to the Gregorian recitation tones and structures for the Passion. The syllabic declamation of the text gives a powerful "speaking" effect, while avoiding the madrigalisms Rore is better known for.

The Tenebrae in music. The heartrending words of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah have at all times inspired a multitude of musical settings imprinted with a characteristic mixture of pain and hope. It would be wrong to imagine that these famous biblical poems written after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 A.D., with rhythmic verse after verse beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, were exclusive specialities of the Baroque period. Renaissance composers did not have to wait for the 17th French century Leçons de Ténèbres before consecrating all their art to these Lamentations – an art marked by an extraordinary personal involvement.

Reedition of the double LP RCA - SEON RL30856 from 1982

Reedition of the double LP RCA - SEON RL30856 from 1982

Rerelease on CD of the recording for Musique en Wallonie (MW 80040-44).

Tears of Lisbon reveals the soul of Portugal in a program featuring music of the Renaissance placed side by side with today's popular fado.  In this highly unusual recording, Paul Van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble come together with contemporary fadistas to explore the heartfelt melancholy pervading Portuguese music, from ancient times to the present.

Fadistas :
Beatriz da Conceiçao, Vocals
Antonio Rocha, Vocals
José Manuel, Guitarra portuguesa
José Antonio, Viola

CD-compilation for the Flanders Festival Ghent and Historical cities - edition 1994.

The music from this CD is taken from the Cypriot Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, J.II.9.

This cycle of "O" Antiphons is part of the Christmas Vespers ceremony, centered around the Magnificat. In the present case, they are heavily troped, and end with a liturgical motet in a more triumphant mood.The music itself it thoroughly isorhythmic, and heavily syncopated. The pieces form a true cycle, linked by both a sequence of modality and motivic figures. This is the most elaborate sacred section of the huge Turin manuscript (Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS J. II 9), the one source for the Cypriot repertory.