Les Cornets Noirs - Echo & Risposta (Virtuoso Instrumental Music from the Galleries of the Abbey Church of Muri) (2009/2019) [Hi-Res]

What Dialogi be is known to everyone: for Dialogus means a conversation, as when one answers the other’s questions, alternating one after the other like in Choros. Thus can also the Echo be here referred to. Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum III, 1619

The rhetorical fundamental gestures which characterise the instrumental compositions of the 16th and 17th centuries are shown most impressively in the echo and response dialogues of spatially separated choirs. At St. Mark’s in Venice, where several musicians’ galleries were available, this multi-choir format reached a highpoint with Giovanni Gabrieli towards the end of the sixteenth century and gained stylistic influence well beyond Italy. The majority of works included in this recording date from the 20s and 30s of the seicento, when composers enjoyed their newfound means of expression and freedom all the more. This music is characterized by exuberant virtuosity and joy of playing, as well as a programmatic accentuation of the then modern style.

The four galleries of the Abbey Church of Muri offer optimal conditions for multi-choral music. So as to include the historical organs of the church, two cornettos were produced whose pitch exactly matches that of the Bossard organs of the Abbey Church of Muri. The present recording is the first sound documentation of this essential musical practice of the Abbey Church of Muri.

The present recording is the first sound documentation of this essential musical practice of the Abbey Church of Muri. Les Cornets Noirs was founded by Gebhard David and Bork-Frithjof Smith in 1997. The group's main interest lies in the solo and ensemble literature for the instrument which gives the group its name: the cornetto (cornetto/ cornet). In the year 2000 Les Cornets Noirs were prize winners in the concours musica antique at the Festival van Vlaanderen Brugge. Since then, the ensemble has performed regularly in Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Luxemburg, France, Italy, and Portugal, both with their own programmes and together with vocal groups for the performance of large-scale Early Baroque works.