Performers: Marit Isaksen Solstrand (voice), Ståle Ytterli (voice), Elizabeth Gaver (fiddle, rebec, recorder), Gisela Attinger (fiddle, recorder), Vegard Lund (lute, harp), Gilles Obermayer (percussion), Hans Olav Gorset (flute, recorders), Linn Andrea Fuglseth (chorus), Anna Maria Friman (chorus), Torunn Østrem Ossum (chorus), Johannes Weisser (voice)
Playing time: 65'
Recording date: February 1999 (Oslo)
Piae Cantiones is a large & important collection of songs which appeared in Finland in 1582. It is a unique example both of Scandinavian music-making in the period as well as of many medieval melodies (some known in other sources) in late Renaissance notation. Especially given the connection to student music-making as well as the contrafacta involved, we can see an easy analogy between this collection and the much earlier German Carmina Burana.
The present production involves modernization of the language, designed especially to be intelligible to today's Norwegian listener (the original collection would have been drawn also from Norway, as the entire region was under Swedish-Finnish hegemony at the time).
The final track is from a different source, from a Dominican monastery in Denmark.
A couple of recordings devoted to music from Norway:
And Sweden:
And a collection confronting even older music from the region:
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Todd M. McComb