布拉格 - 波希米亞的玫瑰 瑪莉亞那無伴奏合唱團 Cappella Mariana, Vojtech Semerad / Praga Rosa Bohemiae

布拉格 - 波希米亞的玫瑰 (波西米亞宗教歌曲選集)
賽美拉德 藝術指導
瑪莉亞那無伴奏合唱團

The recording features works by composers who lived during the era of the art-loving Emperor
and King Rudolf II, when Prague enjoyed great glory, as it became a busy cultural centre,
attracting artists from all over Europe. Like in a melting pot, a variety of musical styles mingled
together in the city: the Franco-Flemish polyphony, represented by the world's most
accomplished composers at the time, as well as the vigorous tradition of literary brotherhoods
with the archaic polyphonic repertoire of the previous generations.

The focal point of Cappella Mariana's new album is the recently rediscovered Prague
Manuscript of Polyphonic Masses, with the fabulously survived Missa Presulem ephebeatum by
Heinrich Isaac, one of the most significant masters of the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style.
Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz's Presulem ephebeatum, whose thematic material inspired Isaac,
attests to his mass being connected with Bohemia and Prague. The album contains a number
of other extraordinary pieces, including Josquin Des Prez's famous Stabat Mater, with an added
sixth voice, which has been uniquely preserved in this form in Bohemia. "Yes, it is so. Josquin
Des Prez's Stabat Mater has survived as part of a Czech source – the Rokycany music collection,
with an added sixth voice, designated as ‘si placet', at pleasure," Vojtech Semerad pointed out.
When asked the question as to which of the works on Capella Mariana's new album was the
most difficult to cope with, he said: "Following the rediscoveries, the hardest nut to crack was to
single out the different stylistic nuances in line with the development of Renaissance music in
Prague from the late Middle Ages to the accession of the Baroque style. I would like to add that
Johannes Tourout's Virgo Maria was complicated owing to an obscure notation in a variety of
sources, yet I dare say that our performance faithfully adheres to the composer's stylistic mode."