Stile Antico – The Phoenix Rising (2013) MCH SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Stile Antico – The Phoenix Rising (2013)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 74:32 min | Front/Rear Cover + Digital Booklet | 3,79 GB
or DSD64 Stereo (from SACD-ISO to Tracks.dsf) > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Front/Rear Cover + Digital Booklet | 1,78 GB
or FLAC 2.0 (carefully converted & encoded to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Front/Rear Cover + Digital Booklet | 1,51 GB
DSD Recording | Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | Label: Harmonia Mundi # HMU 807572

Stile Antico’s eighth disc celebrates the pioneering Tudor Church Music edition, which made available for the first time in the modern era much of the most important English Renaissance sacred music. Alongside Byrd’s evergreen Mass for five voices, Stile Antico’s varied programme includes masterpieces by Tallis, Taverner, White, Gibbons and Morley, all taken from the TCM volumes. This recording was supported by the Carnegie UK Trust, under whose aegis this remarkable edition appeared, in honour of its centenary in 2013, and received accolades including the Diapason d’Or and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

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Stile Antico – Giaches de Wert: Divine Theatre, Sacred Motets (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – Giaches de Wert: Divine Theatre, Sacred Motets (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:07:16 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Franco-Flemish composer Giaches de Wert wrote a considerable amount of sacred music during the late Renaissance, but little of it was published during his lifetime. Only three books of motets were released in 1566 and 1581. Stile Antico’s new album introduces us to another side of this composer who, though Flemish-born, spent most of his life in Italy, primarily in Mantua, where he was to remain for the rest of his life, though not without maintaining connections (both musical and, during the mid-late 1580s, romantic) with the court at Ferrara, where the lively musical life must have been a welcome distraction from his not-always-happy existence at the Mantuan court. The unique and dramatic style of these remarkable motets cannot fail to ravish explorers of this ‘divine theatre’.

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Stile Antico – Song of Songs (2009) MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Stile Antico – Song of Songs (2009)
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,84 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 1,27 GB | Full Artwork
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi USA # HMU 807489 | Country/Year: US 2009 | 3% Recovery Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Vocal, Choral, Sacred, Renaissance

Stile Antico gave us a wonderful sample of Renaissance polyphony from English masters on their previous disc (Heavenly Harmonies – Stile Antico), and now they turn to the other hubs of such music in the C16; the Low Countries, Spain and Italy.
The biblical Song of Songs is a collection of Hebrew love poetry, often explicitly erotic, and as such has echoed down the ages, attracting the attention of musicians even in our own times. Christian Church fathers absorbed the verses as allegories, and they were often used liturgically as a focus for Marian worship.
This Stile Antico programme is an ingenious one, ranging from the early C16th (Clemens non Papa) to works which are in effect polychoral, and thus anticipate the Early Baroque (Guerrero). Groups of polyphonic works are interspersed with short plainchant antiphons from (or adapted from) the Song of Songs, sung by a small group of women. These timeless melismas are palate-cleansing when set against the rich tapestries of interweaving polyphony. Several of the plainchant melodies were also used as the thematic basis for the polyphonic works (as ‘cantus firmus’).
The dozen members of British group Style Antiquo are all in their 20s, and certainly rival a number of well-established choirs in this repertoire, such as Harry Christophers’ The Sixteen. The group has a distinctive sound, however, with a sweet freshness and spontaneity deriving from their chamber music approach (having no conductor). They also prepare their own performing editions for most of the pieces on the recording. Concentration and preparation are remarkable; structure, textural meaning and harmonic movements are all fully worked out for each piece, then translated to a gripping and purposefully flowing interpretation with superbly controlled line-shaping and dynamics. Final cadences are often arrived at with magical effect, truly a ‘coming home’, whether on a climactic note or a gentle diminuendo. It is unusually easy to listen “inside” the transparent textures and hear each individual voice. From the inward stillness of the opening piece by Clemens non Papa to the surging and passionate drama of Victoria’s final Vidi speciosam, these are performances of great depth and vision. It is important to remember that these manuscripts have almost no tempo or dynamic instructions, the performing practices being passed on by imitation from those directed by the composer-singers.
The Harmonia Mundi recording took place in the well-known venue of St Jude-on-the-Hill, London. Its benevolent acoustic resounds with the vocal tapestries, providing an unforgettable multi-channel experience. An immaculate balance is established from the start, and the singers use the sonorities offered by the building with great intelligence. The quietly-sung plainchants seem to be heard from slightly further back, which is very atmospheric. Stile Antico have a surprisingly wide dynamic range which is easily contained in this remarkably natural-sounding DSD capture.
Production values are very high as usual for this label, with beautiful art-work and photography. I was amused by the visual joke of having a photograph of the choir members sitting very formally on chairs around a white room on the booklet cover, while on the booklet sleeve in the digipak, the chairs are empty. There is also a photo of the group warming up with physical exercises before singing. A very informative account of the music is provided, and full Latin texts are supported by translations in English, French and German.
Ancient love-poetry and masterpieces of Renaissance polyphony: the very essence of music. Not to be missed.
Copyright © 2009 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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Stile Antico, Fretwork – Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart: Tudor & Jacobean music for private devotion (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico, Fretwork – Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart: Tudor & Jacobean music for private devotion (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:43 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

For its latest recording on Harmonia Mundi, Stile Antico is joined by the outstanding viol consort Fretwork to explore the wealth of sacred music written not for church performance, but for the court and for the home. Sung entirely in English, this fascinating programme spans two centuries and a vast range of styles, from the austerity of Browne and Taverner to the harmonic daring of Tomkins and Ramsey, and from the smallest works by Campion and Dowland to the great verse anthems of Gibbons and Amner.

‘We are enjoined by this fine recital to bring nuance to distinctions between sacred and secular, and what we sometimes sloppily assume to be public and private modes of musical expression in 16th-century England. The very concept of ‘private musical devotion’ we might melodramatically associate with priest-holes, and Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices in a wardrobe. Some wardrobe it would have to be to accommodate the 12 exultant voices of Tomkins’s O praise the Lord, which is one instance of several on the album where the conceit is stretched thin: just because the piece survives in a private (as opposed to ecclesiastical) collection doesn’t mean that is its natural home. What’s more important is that Stile Antico’s sleek tuning and supple attention to words, and the studio recording, intimate but not claustrophobic, do bring a carefully plotted span (over 120 years) of sacred styles into our listening rooms with rare success.

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Stile Antico – From the Imperial Court: Music for the House of Hapsburg (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – From the Imperial Court: Music for the House of Hapsburg (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:05 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The 16 voices of the British choir Stile Antico have a reputation for perfect blend and for programs that go beyond the favorites generally essayed by the similarly sized British choir the Sixteen. That’s what’s in this collection of motets (and the chanson Mille regretz) united by their connection to the Hapsburg court. It may be surprising to see Thomas Tallis under that rubric, but as the informative booklet points out, he makes the cut due to the marriage of Philip II of Spain to Mary Tudor. As that suggests, and as might be expected from a collection of pieces spanning a century, the Hapsburg factor does little to unite these pieces, even if the Emperor Maximilian does get name-checked at one point. Instead, this is simply a collection of intriguing Renaissance works that are generally beyond the ones normally heard. In the Tallis and several other pieces, the singers do an especially nice job with the striking dissonances that sometimes appear in music of the earlier Renaissance; they neither gloss over the dissonances nor overemphasize them. Big pieces like Heinrich Isaac’s Virgo prudentissima contrast nicely with the the soberer idiom of the likes of Morales. In short, a very well recorded Renaissance a cappella program, marred by a needlessly confusing listing on the outer packaging that does not reflect the actual ordering of the music.

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Stile Antico – Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:19 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The Tenebræ responsories come from an immense collection of polyphonic music for Holy Week, the Officium Hebdomadæ Sanctæ, published by Victoria in 1585, which brings together several pieces written during the twenty years he spent in Rome. The responsories, brought together here, form part of a much longer Tenebræ, which essentially combined the monastic Hours of matins and lauds, for each of the final three days of the Holy Week. One of the characteristic traits of this service consists in the progressive extinguishing of fifteen votive candles until the church is finally plunged into the darkness from which the ceremony draws its name. The responsory is one part of a much broader liturgy, which was for the most part sung in plainsong. The musical richness of Victoria’s polyphonic compositions made a striking contrast to this liturgy. Such an effect is harder to effect in concert, or even on a recording, where we are outside the liturgical context: here, we have uninterrupted polyphony. While the music is very varied, the uninterrupted use of the same mode and the same textures in three or four pieces throughout these 18 Responsories could, at times, give the impression that one is listening to a single piece. To counteract that impression, here and there the Stile Antico vocal ensemble has introduced extracts from readings of the Lamentations, sung in plainsong at the end of each Responsory. And so the contrast is restored. The programme closes with the luminous and oh-so-soothing six-voice motet for Holy Week O Domine Jesu Christi, again published in Rome in 1576.

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Stile Antico – The Phoenix Rising (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – The Phoenix Rising (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:14:31 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The rising “phoenix” in the title of this release by the leaderless, 12-voice British choir Stile Antico carries several meanings. The album presents selections from the ten-volume 1920s publication Tudor Church Music, which had a great deal to do with the prevalence of English Renaissance choral music in the general choral scene of today. That book essentially revived the reputation of English music, but it has itself become shrouded in historical mists; the album marks both the original funding of Tudor Church Music by the Carnegie UK Trust and the centenary of that organization in 2013. The Tudor dynasty lasted for nearly 120 years in Britain (from 1485 to 1603), during which a great deal happened, both politically and musically. What you get here is not a greatest-hits selection from that period, but a mix that aims to convey the musical ambitions of the period more broadly. There are several well-known pieces that are part of the arsenal of many standing choirs: Gibbons’ O clap your hands and Byrd’s Mass for five voices (properly broken up the shorter pieces) and Ave verum corpus. But there are also larger works, in Latin, that let the choir really show its considerable ability to draw fine distinctions of texture. Consider Nolo mortem peccatoris by Thomas Morley, better known for stereotypical madrigals like Now is the month of maying. Nolo mortem peccatoris, a Latin anthem, is touched by Morley’s madrigal language. Even more expressive is the harmonically experimental In ieunio et fletu of Tallis seemingly trying to atone for the simplicity of his Anglican church music. This is, in a nutshell, a fine selection of Renaissance choral music, sung by an unusual and extremely virtuosic choir, and well recorded in hybrid multichannel SACD sound (in, unfortunately, a completely unidentified location). Bravo.

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Stile Antico – The Golden Renaissance: Josquin des Prez (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Stile Antico – The Golden Renaissance: Josquin des Prez (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:22:54 minutes | 2,79 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca (UMO) (Classics)

Stile Antico launches a trilogy of recordings on the Decca label with a portrait of Josquin des Prez, marking the 500th anniversary of the composer’s death. The superb Missa Pange lingua forms the centrepiece of a varied sequence of motets and chansons, including some of Josquin’s best loved music – Ave Maria, virgo serena and Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria – as well as the premiere recording of the chanson Vivrai je tousjours. Two works dedicated to Josquin’s memory, by Hieronymus Vinders and Jacquet de Mantua, complete this sumptuous programme. .. JOSQUIN DES PREZ

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Stile Antico – In a Strange Land (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – In a Strange Land (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:32 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The regime of Queen Elizabeth I dealt harshly with supporters of the old Catholic religion. Torn between obedience and conscience, some of England’s most talented musicians – Philips, Dering and Dowland – chose a life of exile abroad. Others chose to remain in spiritual isolation in England, comparing themselves to the exiled Israelites in Babylon.

Amongst them were Robert White, whose five-part Lamentations are one of the glories of English music of any age, and William Byrd, whose anguished Catholic music is referenced in Shakespeare’s enigmatic poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, vividly set by Huw Watkins especially for stile antico.

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Stile Antico – A Spanish Nativity (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – A Spanish Nativity (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:15 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The Spanish ‘Golden Age’ witnessed an astonishing musical flowering, worthy of Spain’s newfound preeminence on the world stage. Focusing on works for Christmas and Epiphany, Stile Antico explores this glittering musical treasury, drawing together an irresistible mix of sumptuous polyphony and infectiously joyful folk dances.

The centrepiece of the disc is the superbly rich and luminous Missa Beata Dei genitrix Maria by Alonso Lobo. Interspersed between its movements are motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero and Cristóbal de Morales, an exuberant ‘ensalada’ by Mateo Flecha and classic villancicos – Spain’s answer to the traditional carol.

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Stile Antico – Song of Songs (2009) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – Song of Songs (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:17:38 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The most ‘profane’ book of the Old Testament was among the favorite biblical texts of the Middle Ages. The composers of the Renaissance made particular use of it as a metaphor of divine love, or in association with the cult of Mary. After their first two extremely successful recordings, the singers of Stile Antico have chosen some of the finest specimens of these musical settings.

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Stile Antico – The Golden Renaissance: William Byrd (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Stile Antico – The Golden Renaissance: William Byrd (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:35 minutes | 2,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.

Multi-award winning and 4 times Grammy nominated British vocal ensemble, Stile Antico, present the second in a trilogy celebrating major anniversaries of great composers of The Renaissance. The mesmerising music of William Byrd, performed by a leading voice in the early choral music world, celebrating Byrd’s 400th Anniversary in 2023.

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Stile Antico – A Wondrous Mystery: Renaissance Choral Music for Christmas (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Stile Antico – A Wondrous Mystery: Renaissance Choral Music for Christmas (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:12:58 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Stile Antico’s 2015 release on Harmonia Mundi, A Wondrous Mystery, is a sublime collection of Renaissance choral music for Christmas, presented in a pleasant mix of familiar German carols and a mass, with tracks interspersed for the sake of variety. This makes sense in consideration of the group’s broad audience, which may know such popular hymns as Michael Praetorius’ Ein Kind geborn in Bethlehem and Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, or Johannes Eccard’s Übers Gebirg Maria geht and Vom Himmel hoch, yet be somewhat at a loss with the motet and Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis by Jacobus Clemens non Papa, a composer beloved by early music specialists but not exactly a household name for lay listeners. However, the a cappella performances are consistently beautiful and soothing throughout, and the quietly joyous mood of the music fits the album’s title perfectly. The 12-voice choir’s blend is well-balanced and transparent, and the ambience of All Hallow’s Church, Gospel Oak, London gives an ideal resonance for the group’s small size and close miking. –AllMusic Review by Blair Sanderson

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