Leoninus - Sacred Music from c12 Paris (Hyperion)[MP3][twistle]

Leoninus - Sacred Music from c12 Paris (Hyperion)[MP3][twistle]

Léonin 'Magister Leoninus' (fl1150s-c1201) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9onin

MP3 ~160K VBR

This is not plainchant, but is based upon it : distorted chant with harmonies. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organum for a bit more info about this style. It is wonderful music - great at low volume as a background to work.

From the CD blurb :

Diapason d'Or, France. Diapason d'Or de l'Annee. BBC Magazine Best of the Year
Little is known about Léonin beyond the fact that he seems to have had a bent for composing erotic poetry. The somewhat unhelpfully named 'Anonymous IV', a monk from Bury St Edmunds, tells us of two 'masters'—Leoninus and Perotinus—who dominated the twelfth-century musical world. Both were reputedly based at Notre Dame in Paris, and Leoninus was responsible for the Magnus liber organi, the 'Big Book of organum' (an organum being a polyphonic setting of plainchant), which is widely regarded as the single greatest achievement in the development of early polyphony.

For the technically minded, this is music of great complexity, involving interwoven usage of such styles as organum per se, duplum, clausula, and discantus (terms which even medieval theorists took great pleasure in dissecting in an attempt to define their function).

For the rest of us, this is music of fascinating beauty: a combination of the static tranquillity of the plainchant and the florid ornamentation of the 'composed' elements—which have something of the feel of nineteenth-century coloratura six hundred years before its time.

MP3 ~160K VBR
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Magister Leoninus : Sacred Music from 12th Century Paris (Hyperion)
Cappella Amsterdam / Red Byrd

1. Leoninus - Non vos relinquam orphanos - 8:18
2. Leoninus - Dulce lignum, dulces clavos - 8:11
3. Leoninus - Spiritus Sanctus proceden - 7:24
4. Leoninus - Paraclitus Spiritus Sanctus - 8:49
5. Leoninus - Priusquam te formarem - 8:54
6. Leoninus - Inter natos mulierum - 8:15
7. Leoninus - Viderunt omnes fines terre - 8:23
8. Leoninus - Dies sanctificamus - 6:41
9. Leoninus - Pascha nostrum immolatus est - 6:09

Tracks: 9
Total Time: 69:44
Date: 1996

Streamed extracts available at :
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/al.asp?al=CDA66944

Hyperion is re-releasing this CD in November. Had I noticed earlier, I'd not have uploaded this torrent. Perhaps if you like this, you may consider supporting the label; there are two further CDs in this series, as well as recordings of similar music by the likes of Perotin and Petrus.

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