Stephen Paulus was an astonishingly prolific fixture of the American music scene, with some 600 works to his credit. His sudden death in 2014 left classical music—particularly the worlds of opera and choral music—significantly the poorer, so it’s inevitable that we should see his legacy memorialised with new additions to the catalogue. Royal Holloway’s ‘Calm on the Listening Ear of Night’ sets Paulus’s music in dialogue with another Midwestern composer, René Clausen. It’s Clausen whose musical personality emerges most strongly here in these precise performances. His works offer a distinctively American spin on the fashionable Baltic sound world of Ešenvalds and Vasks that is as appealing as it is generous. In pace, which opens the disc, offers eight minutes of lushly filmic excess.

Anima mea explores the Christian concept of the soul through these masterpieces of medieval Sacred Music. Hildegard of Bingen’s beautifully exalted harmonies represent God’s order in the music of the spheres. The recently rediscovered Erfurt Ritual contains sung music from Master Eckhart’s historical context. These antiphons are performed here for the first time since 1525, along with chants from the liturgy of the Roman mass, music from the Notre Dame School, and a glorious Magnificat. The German duo Ensemble Cosmedin, who take their name from a church in Rome, are considered one of the leading ensembles for medieval and modern sacred music. Music of the soul—gentle and luminous.

Karajan surmounted this pinnacle of the choral-symphonic repertoire - which Beethoven himself called "the greatest work I have composed" - no fewer than four times in the recording studio, but only once live and on film: in this unique document from the 1979 Salzburg Easter Festival. The atmosphere of Salzburg's Festspielhaus and festival audience adds a special frisson to this conductor's classic interpretation of the Missa solemnis.

Karl Böhm conducting the Requiem: one of the foremost Mozart conductors of the 20th century in one of Mozart’s most admired works. Singers Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry join forces to form a brilliant cast of soloists. Taped in 1971 at the Piaristenkirche in Vienna, this is a rare document of outstanding artistic quality.

Tigran Mansurian has created a Requiem dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide that occurred in Turkey from 1915 to 1917 – which affected members of the composer's own family in the most direct way. It reconciles the sound and sensibility of his country's traditions with the Latin Requiem text in a profoundly moving contemporary composition, illuminated by the "glow of Armenian modality," as Paul Griffiths puts it in his booklet essay.

This live performance, combining the beauty of flamenco with qawwali, comes from the minds of Faiz Ali Faiz, Duquende, Miguel Poveda & Chicuelo. This was released in 2006 from a music festival in 2005.

16 classic tracks from the legendary vocalist. Contains classic tracks including Light My Fire, Chico & The Man & More. Featuring Feliciano's #1 hit, Feliz Navidad. A virtuosic and soul-steeped singer who never allowed his blindness to impede his fantastic career progress, Jose Feliciano's worldwide musical reign has endured for nearly half a century with no end in sight. Jose's musical innovation has never stopped: his recent projects have been lauded just as emphatically as when he initially made his mark in the U.S. and Latin America during the mid-1960s. Impossible to pigeonhole, Jose Feliciano continues to delight us with his singular musical exports.

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville continued and developed the French tradition of the grand motet set in place by Lully and Lalande, and four of these motets have now been recorded for Glossa by György Vashegyi with a quintet of masterly soloists, the Orfeo Orchestra and the Purcell Choir. Vashegyi, who is fast making his name in French repertoire, has chosen the music of this underrated composer to follow up his Glossa recording of Rameaus Les Fêtes de Polymnie.

Johann Rosenmüller (1619-1684) was one of the most talented and prolific young composers in Germany; he was organist at Leipzig's Nikolaikirche and all-but-assured the upcoming omaskantor position (later held by J. S. Bach), when in 1655 he was arrested due to a sex scandal. Rosenmüller escaped from prison and fled to Venice, where he spent most of the rest of his life, performing at Saint Mark's Cathedral and teaching at the Ospedale della Pieta (decades before Vivaldi's tenure there). is recording presents music from the time of Rosenmüller's exile in Italy, and alternates large-ensemble chamber sonatas published in Venice in 1670 with the first recordings of unpublished bass cantatas- featuring the outstanding young baritone Jesse Blumberg- which ACRONYM has freshly transcribed from a manuscript collection.

The famed painter Hieronymus Bosch portrayed medieval life brimming with symbolism, fantasy and riddles. Commemorating the 500th anniversary of the artist’s passing, the RCO commissioned Detlev Glanert to write a requiem for soloists, choir, organ and orchestra. The composition translates the demonic nature of Bosch’s paintings with textual counterparts into music. Glanert combines traditional requiem texts with excerpts from the manuscript collection Carmina Burana – each movement of the Requiem is accompanied by a poem about the seven deadly sins.

Jordi Savall, once more time, shares with us a beautiful program of instrumentals and chorals pieces from the middle age. Alfons X El Sabio Cantigas are the most popular music pieces about this period, but also really majestic. The sound of this album is really magic. A very good choice for a first approach…

For centuries, war and peace have been accompanied by music. Music was present on the battlefield, of course: the sounding of the trumpet as a signal to gather or attack, drumbeats to recruit soldiers or set them marching, battle songs to raise morale among the troops or instil fear in the bosom of the enemy. Once the hostilities were over, there was singing and dancing in the streets to celebrate peace.

Music of predominantly royal association spanning the reign of Henry V, the Battle of Agincourt and its aftermath, and the coronations in England and France of the boy king Henry VI. The Binchois Consort under Andrew Kirkman bring this music vividly to life, while the copiously illustrated booklet is a pleasure in itself.

The music of this album is a clear example of the deep-rooted migrational nature of our local existence. It is music of a remote past, marked by radically different life conditions. It is music from distant areas connected by wandering people in search of better life conditions. It is music handed down by word of mouth for a long time and finally documented in written form during the last century. It is music to be recovered, reconstructed and re-contextualized in an ongoing process of searching, appropriating and re-inventing, of sense making at the intersection of a resonating past and today's breathing.

Jean Guyot was another of the composers of the post-Josquin generation active in the Low Countries in the mid-sixteenth century. (He was also a priest, author and teacher, although the details of much of his life remain vague.) Cinquecento has previously explored his secular music (on Amorosi pensieriCDA68053), but it was Guyots sacred music which was largely responsible for the high reputation he seemingly enjoyed in his lifetime. Cinquecento proves equally authoritative in both.