Sonnambula, Elizabeth Weinfield - A Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos (2025) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Céphale et Procris: Overture
02. Fantasias for 5 Viols: No. 6, VdGS No. 2
03. Sinfonie et gagliarde, Libro 1: No. 25, Gagliarda detta La Norsina
04. Sinfonia No. 5 in D Minor
05. In Nomine à 5, VdGS No. 1
06. Sinfonie et gagliarde, Libro 1: No. 24, Sinfonia a 5
07. The Bells, BK 38
08. Elohim Hashivenu (Psalm 80)
09. Sinfonia No. 4 in. G Minor
10. My Lady Nevell’s Ground, BK 57
11. Fantasias for 5 Viols: No. 4, VdGS No. 1
12. Sinfonia No. 7 in D Minor (Keyboard Transcription by James Kennerley)
13. Varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, brandi, e corrente, Libro 4: Sonata No. 11 detta La Scatola
14. Mi querer tanto vos quiere

Disruption and displacement wasn't uncommon in 16th-and 17th-centuries Europe. During the Reformation, creative individuals, including composers, were often forced to conceal their identities - for reasons social, religious, ethnic, racial or otherwise. Yet despite - or perhaps due to - the disorder, musical styles and forms flourished, earning the era it's Renaissance designation and thus creating Beauty in a Moment of Chaos.

Sonnambula, an ensemble of New York City-based early music luminaries, bestow beauty on their AVIE debut, traversing an aural intersection of beliefs with northern and southern European styles. Here is the beauty of William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing in Protestant England; of Leonora Duarte, a Portuguese-Jewish woman forced to live as a converso (New Christian), in Antwerp, and Parisian Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, whose lost works have re-emerged with a vengeance in our own time; of the Bolognese Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder who emigrated to England, and Salomone Rossi who unusually set Hebrew texts to Western-style polyphony from his relatively tolerant position in the court of Mantua.

The release of Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos coincides with Sonnambula's taking up residency at New York City's newly-renovated premiere museum, The Frick Collection.

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