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Anonymous 4-The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads For Christmas

The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads For Christmas [SACD]
~ Anonymous 4

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Product Reviews

The nearly inexhaustible supply of medieval and Renaissance music for the Christmas season has happily provided Anonymous 4 with material for yet another holiday album. The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads for Christmas draws on English and Irish sources as well as several from the New World: William Billings, Southern Harmony (1835), and a 15th century English ballad carol in a version collected in Kentucky in 1917. The American selections are especially fascinating, ranging from the exceptionally sweet folk hymns from Southern Harmony to the intricate counterpoint of Billings' late 18th century fuguing tune, Bethlehem, probably the most advanced music written by a North American up to that time. The singers invest the pieces with a distinctively American folk sound without resorting to twangy clich s, often in startling contrast with the straight, pure tone used in the English repertoire. That is hardly a surprise given the group's history and demonstrated skill in adapting to a broad variety of national and regional styles of vocal production. What is unchanging in their work is the life and spirit that the singers breathe into this music; there is nothing academic sounding about their scrupulous attention to the subtleties of the various vocal styles they bring to these wonderfully attractive pieces. The sound of Harmonia Mundi's hybrid SACD is characteristically clean and warm, with a natural, intimate ambience. The CD should interest any fans of the group, anyone looking for appealing new Christmas music, and anyone who loves top-notch a cappella vocal ensembles. ~ Stephen Eddins, Rovi

Product Notes

Anonymous 4 brings us the Christmas story as told in medieval English carols and Anglo-American spiritual songs in a program inspired by the 15th-century miracle ballad The Cherry Tree Carol, which flourishes both in the British Isles and in America.

Classical Data

58:29
Vocal
Contemporary
Anonymous 4
USA
The female vocal quartet called Anonymous 4 has become one of the most popular and respected small vocal groups specializing in early music. The group has attained the elusive combination of popularity and respect through its unique blend of creativity and scholarly/historical depth. The name "Anonymous 4" comes from a scholarly convention for designating anonymous medieval writers and scribes with numbers; working with a particular manuscript by the scribe known as Anonymous 4, they found it an ideal name for their new quartet. The group was formed in 1986. Its purpose was to experiment with the sound of medieval music (both chant and polyphony) as sung by higher voices. Its original members included Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Johanna Marie Rose, and Ruth Cunningham. Jacqueline Horner replaced Cunningham in 1998, and in 2007, Cunningham returned, replacing Rose. The group's four members are singers of considerable beauty of tone, range, and flexibility, but all of them had nontraditional backgrounds to one extent or another. Genensky, originally a folk singer, earned an M.A. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert in traditional American shape-note singing, and experimented with different vocal techniques for the different strains of British-American folk song. Hellauer, a native of New York City, was a trumpeter with a B.A. in music from Queens College. She had always been fascinated by vocal music of the medieval and Renaissance eras, leading her to become a singer and to earn advanced musicology degrees at Queens College and Columbia University. Horner (Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek after her 2008 marriage), of Belfast, Northern Ireland, is the only non-American in the group. She attended Queen's University, earning a B.A. with joint honors in music and English. In London, she studied performance practice at City University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Like many other medieval-oriented performers, she is interested in both early and modern music, and has performed with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain, the Ensemble for Early Music, Ensemble Moderne, and Continuum. She moved to New York, which she calls her "favorite city in the universe." Cunningham has a degree in early music from the New England Conservatory of Music, and besides singing, plays and teaches recorder and Renaissance flute. She also works with groups and individuals as a sound healing practitioner. Anonymous 4 is renowned for the depth of its scholarship. Hellauer does the primary music research, and when needed prepares the group's repertory by transcribing it into modern notation from original sources. Genensky is in charge of language research and study of literary sources, and adapting readings for their concerts. The teamwork results in concerts that avoid presenting the music in a vacuum. Anonymous 4's programs are innovative and entertaining, relating the music to its time and milieu through narrative and poetry interwoven with the music. Sometimes they fill out groups of chants or fragmentary pieces of polyphony with music of their own composition in order to make convincing wholes, but the new music they create is done accurately enough to blend seamlessly with the medieval originals. Beyond such historical considerations, the group's astonishingly beautiful and pure vocal blend has made it one of the leading acts in classical music recording. Despite being involved in what may seem a narrowly specialized academic area of music, they had sold about a million copies of their recordings on the Harmonia Mundi Label by the turn of the 21st century. Among these were On Yoolis Night, a medieval Christmas album that won the prestigious French Diapason d'Or award. Their first disc, An English Ladymass, was CD Review's Classical Early Music Disc of the Year, and their fourth, The Lily and the Lamb, was Classic CD's Disc of the Year for 1996. Tower Music reported that its 11,000 Virgins disc of music by Hildegard von Bingen was one of the top 100 Independent Label releases in 1997-1998. Other significant albums include Voices of Light, Richard Einhorn's contemporary oratorio-soundtrack to Carl Dreyer's classic 1928 film, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1995). The group turned to early American religious traditions with its albums American Angels (2003) and Gloryland (2006). ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi
The nearly inexhaustible supply of medieval and Renaissance music for the Christmas season has happily provided Anonymous 4 with material for yet another holiday album. The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads for Christmas draws on English and Irish sources as well as several from the New World: William Billings, Southern Harmony (1835), and a 15th century English ballad carol in a version collected in Kentucky in 1917. The American selections are especially fascinating, ranging from the exceptionally sweet folk hymns from Southern Harmony to the intricate counterpoint of Billings' late 18th century fuguing tune, Bethlehem, probably the most advanced music written by a North American up to that time. The singers invest the pieces with a distinctively American folk sound without resorting to twangy clich s, often in startling contrast with the straight, pure tone used in the English repertoire. That is hardly a surprise given the group's history and demonstrated skill in adapting to a broad variety of national and regional styles of vocal production. What is unchanging in their work is the life and spirit that the singers breathe into this music; there is nothing academic sounding about their scrupulous attention to the subtleties of the various vocal styles they bring to these wonderfully attractive pieces. The sound of Harmonia Mundi's hybrid SACD is characteristically clean and warm, with a natural, intimate ambience. The CD should interest any fans of the group, anyone looking for appealing new Christmas music, and anyone who loves top-notch a cappella vocal ensembles. ~ Stephen Eddins, Rovi

Details

Anonymous 4
The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols & Ballads For Christmas
Classical & Opera
Classical Artists
14 September 2010
Sacd Sacd ~ Discs:1
Harmonia Mundi (Fra) ( HAM )
SACD
807453
093046745363

Track Listing

Track # Title
1 Prophetarum Presignata - Irish, 14th Century
2 Nowel Syng We Bothe Al And Som - English, 15th C.
3 Alma Redemptoris Mater - English, 15th C.
4 The Shepherd's Star - American, Southern Harmony 1835
5 Newell - Tydings Trew - English, 15th C.
6 Mervele Noght Iosep - English, 15th C.
7 Synge We To This Mery Cumpane - English, 15th C.
8 Qui Creavit Celum - English, 15th C.
9 A Virgin Unspotted - William Knapp
10 Now May We Syngyn - English, 15th C.
11 Lullay My Child - This Ender Nigthgt - English, 15th C.
12 Star In The East - American, Southern Harmony 1835
13 Veni Redemptor Gencium - English, 15th C.
14 The Cherry Tree Carol - English, 15th C.; This Version Kentucky, 1917
15 Salve Mater Misericordie - Irish, 14th C.
16 Hail Mary Ful Of Grace - English, 15th C.
17 Bethlehem - William Billings
# Title
  * We do our best to maintain an accurate database, but errors occur. Please use this list as a guideline.

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