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Huelgas Ensemble & Paul Van Nevel
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Huelgas Ensemble & Paul Van Nevel · The Huelgas Ensemble is a Belgian early-music group, founded in 1971 by the Flemish conductor Paul Van Nevel. Its name refers to a manuscript of polyphonic music, the Codex Las Huelgas. The ensemble concentrates on Renaissance polyphony, and has built up an extensive discography of it.
Music and breakthrough
Van Nevel is known for his own way of working. For many pieces he has the singers and himself stand in a large circle around a microphone hanging above the centre. For concerts in 2005 at the Rheingau Musik Festival, the pews in the basilica of Schloss Johannisberg even had to be unscrewed from the floor. In 2009, after eight years with Harmonia Mundi, the group returned to Sony Classical, which reissued a box set of fifteen CDs.
Influence
The group is important above all for the way it makes the polyphony of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries audible: each voice is an independent line, and together they form a rich and clear whole. Nuper rosarum flores by Guillaume Dufay from 1436, a motet for the consecration of the dome of Florence Cathedral, is an example of this music. Such recordings also made early music accessible to listeners who come from pop.
Listening
Nuper rosarum flores (Dufay) · Huelgas Ensemble & Paul Van Nevel, 1436