Titelouze: Hyme "Exultet Caelum" Hymne "Ave Maris Stella" Hymne "A Solis Ortus"
For a Cathedral offers us the testimony of this miraculous flowering of sacred works witnessed by the beginning of the 17th century. The pieces by Jehan Titelouze, father of the French organ, alternate with works by the greatest maîtres de chapelle of the period, which the ensemble Les Meslanges enables us to discover for the first time on disc.
This programme evokes the sacred music of cathedrals in the organ works of Titelouze, which glorifies Franco-Flemish art whilst opening up to the search for a new expressiveness. In the first third of the 17th century, extraordinary keyboard masterpieces were published in the four corners of Europe. The organ pieces by Jehan Titelouze, ‘Canon & Organist of the Church of Rouën’, belong to this miraculous flowering: his Hymnes de l’Eglise were printed in 1623 by Ballard (Paris), soon followed by a second book devoted to the Magnificat ou cantique de la Vierge (1626).
To celebrate the ‘father of the French organ’, the ensemble Les Meslanges has chosen to alternate these pieces, played on the organ by François Ménissier, with the voice and other ‘instrumens musicaulx’ such as the cornett and the serpent, indispensable instruments in cathedrals in the 17th century. Jehan Titelouze is presented in relation with the musicians of his era in the place where he evolved: Rouen Cathedral.
One will thus hear a mass by Henri Frémart, master of music at Rouen Cathedral then Notre-Dame de Paris, and some faux-bourdons from Artus Aux-Cousteaux and Jean de Bournonville, who won the Puy de Sainte Cécile in Rouen and the Puy de Musicque in Evreux, both highly reputed competitions.
Magnificat
