Officium (album)
Encyclopedia
Officium is an album by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek
and early music
vocal group, The Hilliard Ensemble, that was released in 1994.
Brought together by Manfred Eicher
, this collaboration has become one of the most successful releases on the ECM label, achieving sales of more than 1.5 million. The Allmusic review by Richard S. Ginell awards the album 3.5 stars and states "Recorded in a heavily reverberant Austrian monastery, the voices sometimes develop in overwhelming waves, and Garbarek rides their crest, his soprano sax soaring in the monastery acoustic, or he underscores the voices almost unobtrusively, echoing the voices, finding ample room to move around the modal harmonies yet applying his sound sparingly."
Following a number of successful concert tours, a second collaborative album, Mnemosyne, was released in 1999. Officium Novum, another sequel album, was released in September 2010.
Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war Czesław Garbarek and a Norwegian farmer's daughter...
and early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
vocal group, The Hilliard Ensemble, that was released in 1994.
Brought together by Manfred Eicher
Manfred Eicher
Manfred Eicher is a German record producer and the founder of ECM Records and its subsidiaries.Eicher studied music at the Academy of Music in Berlin. He is a record producer and a double-bass player. In 1969 he founded a record label in Munich called ECM - Edition of Contemporary Music...
, this collaboration has become one of the most successful releases on the ECM label, achieving sales of more than 1.5 million. The Allmusic review by Richard S. Ginell awards the album 3.5 stars and states "Recorded in a heavily reverberant Austrian monastery, the voices sometimes develop in overwhelming waves, and Garbarek rides their crest, his soprano sax soaring in the monastery acoustic, or he underscores the voices almost unobtrusively, echoing the voices, finding ample room to move around the modal harmonies yet applying his sound sparingly."
Following a number of successful concert tours, a second collaborative album, Mnemosyne, was released in 1999. Officium Novum, another sequel album, was released in September 2010.
Track listing
- "Parce mihi domine" (Christóbal de MoralesCristóbal de MoralesCristóbal de Morales was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance. He is generally considered to be the most influential Spanish composer before Victoria.- Life :...
) - 6:42 - "Primo tempore" (Anonymous) - 8:03
- "Sanctus" (Anonymous) - 4:44
- "Regnanten Sempiterna" (Anonymous) - 5:36
- "O Salutaris Hostia" (Pierre de La RuePierre de La RuePierre de la Rue , called Piersson, was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, and a long associate of the Habsburg-Burgundian musical chapel, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as one of the...
) - 4:34 - "Procedentem sponsum" (Anonymous) - 2:50
- "Pulcherrima rosa" (Anonymous) - 6:55
- "Parce mihi domine" (de Morales) - 5:35
- "Beata viscera" (Magister PerotinusPérotinPérotin , also called Perotin the Great, was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style...
) - 6:34 - "De spineto nata rosa" (Anonymous) - 2:30
- "Credo" (Anonymous) - 2:06
- "Ave maris stella" (Guillaume DufayGuillaume DufayGuillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...
) - 4:14 - "Virgo flagellatur" (Anonymous) - 5:19
- "Oratio Ieremiae" (Anonymous) - 5:00
- "Parce mihi domine" (de Morales) - 6:52
- Recorded September 1993 at Propstei St. Gerold
- Tonmeister: Peter Laenger
Personnel
- The Hilliard Ensemble
- David James - countertenorCountertenorA countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...
- Rogers Covey-Crump - tenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
- John PotterJohn Potter (musician)-Life:John Potter's musical education began as a chorister at King's College Cambridge, after which he became a scholar at The King's School, Canterbury and exhibitioner at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge...
- tenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... - Gordon Jones - baritoneBaritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
- David James - countertenor
- Jan GarbarekJan GarbarekJan Garbarek is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war Czesław Garbarek and a Norwegian farmer's daughter...
- sopranoSoprano saxophoneThe soprano saxophone is a variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument, invented in 1840. The soprano is the third smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass and tubax.A transposing instrument pitched in...
and tenor saxophoneTenor saxophoneThe tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
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