Recordings
“Budding singers, composers, conductors and producers everywhere take note: this is how it’s done.” Classic FM Magazine
Morales Requiem, Music for Philip II
Morales: Officium defunctorum; Missa pro Defunctis
Lobo: Motet: Versa est in luctum
Gabrieli Consort
Paul McCreesh (conductor)
Cristóbal de Morales was one of the first important contributors to a repertoire of musical settings of liturgy for the dead. His settings of funeral music were disseminated widely across Europe, and his Missa pro Defunctis may well have been sung in Mexico in 1559 at memorial ceremonies for Emperor Charles V. This CD explores music by Morales and Lobo written for memorial rites, with chants for the Mass taken from 16th century Spanish sources.
Excerpt: Lobo “Versa Est in Luctum”
BUY: Deutsche Grammophon | Amazon | iTunes
“A superb recording of one of Morales’s best-known Masses placed within a context that highlights and complements it in Paul McCreesh’s usual imaginative fashion. All the chant appropriate to the Mass is there… Morales’s setting is of a restrained beauty, but also of considerable power. The Gabrieli Consort understands both these characteristics very well, never diminishing the work by exaggerating the former, nor distorting it by overblowing the latter, and conveying a sure grasp of the way the music’s architecture is achieved through Morales’s tremendous melodic ability.”Goldberg
“Splendid… By incorporating instrumental pieces and plainsong settings of the other liturgical elements, McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players produce a truly magnificent account… that vividly portrays a ‘living’ celebration of the Mass.”BBC Music Magazine
DG Archiv
0289 457 5972 2 DDD AH
March 1998