Sonnambula - A Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Disruption and displacement wasn't uncommon in 16th-and 17th-centuries Europe. During the Reformation, creative individuals, including composers, were often forced to conceal their identities - for reasons social, religious, ethnic, racial or otherwise. Yet despite - or perhaps due to - the disorder, musical styles and forms flourished, earning the era it's Renaissance designation and thus creating "Beauty in a Moment of Chaos".

Sonnambula, an ensemble of New York City-based early music luminaries, bestow beauty on their AVIE debut, traversing an aural intersection of beliefs with northern and southern European styles. Here is the beauty of William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing in Protestant England; of Leonora Duarte, a Portuguese-Jewish woman forced to live as a converso ("New Christian"), in Antwerp, and Parisian Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, whose lost works have re-emerged with a vengeance in our own time; of the Bolognese Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder who emigrated to England, and Salomone Rossi who unusually set Hebrew texts to Western-style polyphony from his relatively tolerant position in the court of Mantua.

The release of Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos coincides with Sonnambula's taking up residency at New York City's newly-renovated premiere museum, The Frick Collection.

TRACKLIST

1 Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Overture to Cephale et Procris (1694)
2 Richard Dering: Fantasia No. 6 (VdGS No. 2)
3 Salomone Rossi: Gagliarda detta La Norsina, from Il primo libro (1607)
4 Leonora Duarte: Sinfonia No. 5
5 Alfonso Ferrabosco I: In Nomine a 5 (VdGS No. 1)
6 Salomone Rossi: Sinfonia a 5, from Il primo libro (1607)
7 William Byrd: The Bells, MB 38
8 Salomone Rossi: Elohim Hashivenu (Psalm 80)
9 Leonora Duarte: Sinfonia No. 4
10 William Byrd: My Lady Nevell's Ground, MB 57 (c. 1591)
11 Richard Dering: Fantasia No. 4 (VdGS No. 1)
12 Leonora Duarte: Sinfonia No. 7 (Keyboard transcription by James Kennerley, b. 1984)
13 Salomone Rossi: Sonata Undecima detta la Scatola, from Il quarto libro (1622)
14 Enric de Paris ("Enrrique"): Mi querer tanto vos quiere



Thanks to the Original customer.