The Early Music Collection

The Early Music Collection is a wide-ranging survey that traces the history of Western music from plainchant, the music of the Catholic church, through polyphony, to the end of the 17th century. In exploring a period of over half a millennium, it includes the very greatest vocal and instrumental composers, from the 12th-century Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, to the late-Renaissance world of Monteverdi. This essential collection includes many critically acclaimed recordings made by the leading choirs, consorts, instrumentalists and conductors of our time employing the latest historically informed performance practice.

This comprehensive collection includes vernacular songs, lute songs, music for viols, organ, and more, performed by leading ensembles and instrumentalists like lutenist Nigel North, harpsichordist Glen Wilson, the Rose Consort of Viols, Oxford Camerata and Jeremy Summerly, Musica Ficta and Bo Holten, and many more.

Ensemble Leones’ 2015 recording Argentum et Aurum (8573346) won the Early Music category in the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA), with American Record Guide commenting ‘The program is so imaginative, so astutely played and sung, that one is loathe to raise even one complaint.’

In 2014 we released a 10-disc set entitled Saints and Sinners (8501067), a collection of works from the Medieval and Renaissance eras. The boxed set was praised by The New Recordings, which said that the ‘performances of both the ‘saintly’ music and the (mostly) renaissance ‘sinful’ dances and songs are top-notch.’

Contents:

CD 1
Adorate Deum: Gregorian Chant from the Proper of the Mass

CD 2
Hildegard of Bingen - Heavenly Revelations

CD 3
Music of the Troubadours

CD 4
Neidhart - A Minnesinger and his ‘Vale of Tears’

CD 5
Carmina Burana

CD 6
Machaut - Messe de Nostre Dame

CD 7
Argentum et Aurum

CD 8
Dufay - Chansons

CD 9
Ockeghem - Requiem

CD 10
Music from the Eton Choirbook

CD 11
Missa Conceptio tua

CD 12
A-La-Mi-Re Manuscripts

CD 13
Anchieta - Missa Sine nomine

CD 14
Frottole

CD 15
Josquin Desprez - Missa L’Homme armé

CD 16
Luis de Milán - Music for Vihuela (+ Luis de Narváez)

CD 17
Tallis - Spem in alium

CD 18
Palestrina - Missa Papae Marcelli

CD 19
Lassus - Lagrime di San Pietro

CD 20
Byrd - Complete Fantasias for Harpsichord

CD 21
Gabrieli - Music for Brass Vol.2

CD 22
Elizabethan Songs and Consort Music

CD 23
Sweelinck - Organ Works

CD 24
Dowland - Pavans, Galliards and Almains

CD 25
Gesualdo - Madrigals, Book 1

CD 26
Campion - Lute Songs

CD 27
Monteverdi - Madrigals, Book 5

CD 28
Tomkins - Consort Music for Viols and Voices

CD 29
The Guerra Manuscript Vol. 1

CD 30
Lawes - Consort Music for Viols, Lute and Theorbos