MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Sound Samples & Downloads

Johannes ECCARD (1553-1611)
Fröhlich will ich singen: Sacred and Secular Songs
Staats- und Domchor Berlin; Lautten Compagney Berlin/Kai-Uwe Jirka
rec. September 2011, Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin-Dahlem
Track listing below review
Texts and translations
CARUS 83.449 [58:10]

Experience Classicsonline



 
Johannes Eccard, eminent Berlin Kapellmeister, had been counter-tenor in the Catholic Hofkapelle in Munich, a choir directed by Orlando di Lasso. It was a period that was profoundly important in his musical development. He was clearly influenced by Lasso in terms of musical word setting and textual fidelity and in the compositional craft necessary to deal justly with rhythm. He was also influenced strongly by Martin Luther’s call for hymnal simplicity. This new ethos, a sweeping away of excess and ‘modishly, elegant tones’, permeated Eccard’s motet and secular writing too. Polyphony is relegated, and the leading voice takes the melodic line in settings of directness and purity.
 
There are 18 settings in this selection, of which eight are premiere recordings. The music is in the safest of hands with the Staats- und Domchor Berlin and Lautten Compagney Berlin directed by Kai-Uwe Jirka. Ein feste Burg makes for an appropriate start, opening with a choral tutti and the orchestra’s appealing contribution focused clearly on the percussion and brass, in the best German tradition. De Profundis/Aus tiefer Not is a more ‘mixed’ setting with choral harmonies and orchestral polyphony demarcated throughout. Hört ich ein Kuckuck singen is genial and increasingly jubilant, spiced with tambourine and percussion. The cuckoo motif is brought out wittily. Melodies are lively, uncluttered and the text’s sentiment is conveyed with unambiguous directness — just what Luther ordered.
 
It was precisely this stripping away of what Luther saw as obfuscation that Eccard was so good at. Rarely does one find vocal polyphony at all, the music being stripped back to a rather utilitarian but not unattractive immediacy of meaning. The solo pieces with small instrumental accompaniment reprise the approach — on of the previously unrecorded songs, for example, is the sprightly Kein Buhlerei ficht mich mehr an, and its charm, allied to its simplicity, to which one can append the intelligence of its instrumental backing — Blockflöte, viola, viola da gamba and violone — measures its success. It surprises me that it’s never been recorded before.
 
There is no lack of wit in some of the settings. There’s a deliberately jokey, horrendously out of tune gag in Der Musik Feind seind Ignoranten which include a baton rap, a restart, and some suspiciously Swanee Whistle type noises later on. Is all this in the score? Unser lieben Hühnerchen seems to start with — am I right? — a kazoo. The demotic is certainly ever present, and the earthy, peasant offerings — this one details the sexual longing of forlorn, cock-less hens — make for entertaining listening.
 
A number of the texts are settings of Luther’s translations of the Psalms. One of the most imposing is Das Vater unser and it shows the grand, spacious, though still compact reach of which Eccard was capable, very well caught in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin-Dahlem. Indeed these affirmatory and amusing settings, sacred and secular alike, show his concentration on the essential message of the text and the most appropriate way it could be transmitted to a congregation. Eccard has been well served here — and do try to hear a companion disc of his sacred songs on this same label [83.265].
 
Jonathan Woolf
 

Track listing
Ein feste Burg [3:05]
De Profundis/Aus tiefer Not [3:15]
Erbarm dich mein [4:49]
Fröhlich will ich singen [4:07]
Hört ich ein Kuckuck singen [3:37]
Ach Gott, wie gern ich wissen wollt [1:58]
Schöns Lieb, was hab ich dir getan [2:27]
Schwerlangwelig [2:44]
Kein Buhlerei ficht mich mehr an [2:04]
Frau, dein Gestalt [2:22]
Es trau’r was trauren soll [3:08]
Der Musik Feind seind Ignoranten [1:56]
Ein Verräter und ein Suppenfresser [2:49]
Unser lieben Hühnerchen [4:48]
Mein schönste Zier und Kleinod bist [3:08]
Selig is der gepreiset [5:02]
Das Vater unser [3:10]
Da pacem Domine/Verleih uns Frieden [3:41]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.