Orlando Consort - The Call of the Phoenix (2002)

The Orlando Consort once again shows its intelligence and educated approach to Renaissance-era music, while not denying the beauty of the pieces. The album is a demonstration, in varied works, of the contenance angloise, the sound that distinguished English music of the fifteenth century from that of the continent. This release pays particular attention to votive antiphons, although there are also a few mass movements included. According to the excellent notes about the works in the accompanying booklet (which also includes lyrics), these were probably written for private chapels or choirs. The more intimate sound of the three- or four-voice works was recorded in a small parish church, so the amount of resonance is appropriate to the original use. There is no huge, hollow-sounding chamber to make the words unintelligible on this recording. The survey begins with works by contemporaries of John Dunstaple and includes a lovely example of Dunstaple's isorhythmic motets in Salve scema. The two upper voices, using two different texts about St. Catherine of Alexandria, wind around the two lower voices, which ground the work with a chant used for her feast day. Another piece from around the same time is the Audivi vocem, a responce that alternates lively, four-voice polyphony with homophonic plainchant, a real contrast of the "old" and the "new." Mixed in with anonymous works of the time are pieces by John Plummer and Walter Frye, representatives of the generation following Dunstaple. Their works show more imitation and passing of melody between voices. The survey ends with Stella Celi by Walter Lambe, from the Eton Choirbook. In all of these pieces, there is clear but complementary independence of lines, sung with grace and a reverence for the music. -- Patsy Morita