MUSC 310 Playlist

Before we get to the extra music for this semester, I thought I'd put up the playlist that I had going for last semester's music:


Open this in actual Spotify for better navigation, but here's a quick run-down of what you've got (note: it is in roughly chronological order):

• Music of Leonin/Perotin. The very first song on the list (Beata viscera) is one that many of you loved when I played it before class last semester. Throw on a pair of good headphones and it's even better, as you can tell that they recorded in in a church while it was raining outside. 
• Guillaume de Mauchaut: La messe de nostre dame. This is the complete thing, rather than just the movement from NAWM. It also has appropriate settings of the proper (since, as you'll recall, the mass is actually just an Ordinary cycle). That means this is pretty close to what you might have actually heard sung in a church in 1364.
• John Dunstable motets. Of these, Veni sancte spiritus... is a particular favorite of mine. 
• Guillaume Du Fay, Missa Se la face ay pale. This, unlike the Mauchaut, is just the ordinary parts of the mass. If you click on the full album, they've done the propers as well, but I just put the ordinary parts in here because 1) they're jaw-droppingly gorgeous and 2) they have the same cantus firmus running throughout and you can hear how the individual movements are connected. The "Agnus Dei" in particular is amazing. The huge cadence at about 41 seconds in (in which a giant suspension gets resolved) never fails to give me goosebumps. Listen to this as loudly as you can handle. Hauntingly pretty.
• A whole bunch of masses by Johannes/Jean de Ockeghem. You already know the Missa prolationum, but the Missa pro defunctis should be of some note. It's the first surviving polyphonic setting of the entire requiem mass. This is the work that eventually leads us to the Mozart Requiem and (obviously much more importantly) Britten's War Requiem. I also really love the Missa "Mi-Mi." I don't have much to say about it, but it is lovely. Ockeghem is pretty underrated. 
• Josquin de Prez' Missa de beata virgine. A warning, whoever mastered this recording did a great job, but they left about 7 or 8 seconds of silence at the beginning of the Kyrie, so don't freak out, it will start playing. It's here just so you can hear another Josquin mass. And the second is his Missa Ave maris stella (preceded by the plainchant antiphon of the same name). I threw this in here because I think one or two of you did it for your papers last semester. (Jess, was that you?)
• Thomas Tallis' mass for four voices. I can't do this without giving you a lot of British music, okay? I just have a weakness. Notice, despite the awkward labeling of Spotify, that the Mass for Four Voices is Tallis and the Mass A 4/5 is Byrd. They're from the same album. 
• William Byrd's Masses for four and five voices. Written during a time of some pretty serious changes in the English church (remember the shift to Anglicanism and then the turmoil that followed?), these are my favorite of his little nameless masses. Starting to notice a trend? I'm just giving you music that I really like. 
• Alright, this is one of my favorite pieces of all time. William Byrd's motet Ave verum corpus. I'm not sure what to say about it, really. I got to sing it a few years ago and it's stuck with me ever since. So yeah. Here's a score (PDF if you click on the link) if you want to sing along too. You can actually find most of this stuff on IMSLP if you look. 
• Alessandro Striggio's Mass in 40 parts. (Note, this is the father of the Alessandro Striggio who wrote the libretto to L'Orfeo). This is just... holy cow. Some absolutely incredible writing here, with 40 separate polyphonic parts. And at the final Agnus Dei? He says "eff it" and makes it 60 parts. We've known about this for years, but it's only recently (2007 or so) been fully recovered. Pretty awesome stuff. 
• Tomas Luis De Victoria's Missa O magnum mysterium. This is here because I'm obsessed with the original motet on which this is based. No, really. Check this out. An entire playlist of different settings of that same text.
• Finally, a bunch of madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo. They're just a ton of fun, and boy what cool harmonic stuff. I think the jazz players among you will really love these.

Anyhow, you should never see a post this long again. From now on I'll add to a new playlist (to be revealed soon!) that's MUSC 320. And since that'll be over the course of the semester you should just see a paragraph or two at a time.