Capturing Music Companion CD

The professional ensemble Blue Heron was approached last year by Professor Thomas Forrest Kelly, the Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard, and author of “First Nights: Five Musical Premiers” (Yale) to record a companion CD for his new book, “Capturing Music: The Story of Notation”, to be published by Norton.

 

Blue Heron is excited to announced that the book has now been published and is available for purchase. As Prof. Kelly puts it, “it is a book that sings to you”. The full-color manuscript reproductions truly come to life in Blue Heron’s performances. Heidi Waleson, in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal, describes “vivid and revelatory” performances of “exquisite beauty”. (Dec. 1, 2014). The CD cannot be purchased separately. 

 

Here are some audio selections from the CD. (“Leoninus: Alleluya pascha nostrum (organum duplum)”; “Motet: Aucun ont trouvé”).

 

Spanning a period of some 600 years of written notation, the music runs from Gregorian Chant (e.g. “Ad te levavi”) to Sumer is Icumen In, through Perotin and Leonin (polyphony from 11th-century Paris), up to songs of the rhythmically complex songs of Machaut, Ciconia and Senleches. The CD contains 16 tracks.

 

“Readers will delight in the exquisite beauty of this volume—it looks like a richly illuminated manuscript! And with Blue Heron’s expertly and lovingly produced recordings, this is so much more than a book—it is something rare and wonderful.” — Susan Hellauer, founding member of Anonymous 4

 

“Lucid and engrossing” — Alex Ross of The New Yorker (“The Rest is Noise” blog)

 

Available wherever books are sold. ISBN 978-0-393-06496-4. 256 pages.