From Binchois to Josquin
Björn Schmelzer founded Graindelavoix in 1999. This choir is an outsider in the Flemish early music landscape. The group does not adhere to the unwritten aesthetic "etiquette" but looks for alternative possibilities in which expression and intensity receive extra attention. The programs are always attractive. In Flushing, Graindelavoix presents a clear picture of a beautiful genealogy of three generations of continuous Franco-Flemish polyphony from the 15th and early 16th centuries with a common thread: Johannes Ockeghem was a pupil of the Burgundian composer and singer Gilles Binchois. Ockeghem himself, in turn, was the teacher of Josquin Desprez and Loyset Compère, and had a great influence on Jacob Obrecht. Obrecht was born in Ghent, worked in Antwerp and Bruges, and succumbed to the plague in 1505 in Ferrara Italy, when he replaced Josquin, who managed to escape the deadly disease in time.
Some highlights of this program include: the impressive and moving Agnus Dei Of Binchois. The lament for Binchois that Ockeghem wrote. The polyphony shows up well in other works by Ockeghem such as in his Alma Redemptoris Mater in which the listener is taken by the hand, as it were, on an imaginary journey through a mystical space: from heavenly heights to the deepest layers of the human soul.
Josquin employs a technique in which repetition enhances variation.
Absolutely spectacular is the Salve Regina by Jacob Obrecht, intricate in composition and quite virtuosic.
Graindelavoix this time consists of: Andrew Hallock/alt, Albert Riera/tenor, Marius Peterson/tenor, Arnout Malfliet/bass and Björn Schmelzer.
