1996-2000

the early years 1996-2000

1996-1999

The Egidius Kwartet career started with two concert programs, one with secular, and one with religious music.
1996      Venus-ghejancksel (The plaint of Venus)
contained four genres: Dutch songs, French chansons, German Tenor-lied and Italian madrigals. Venus-ghejancksel was performed 34 times (till 2001), often in collaboration with instrumentalists, such as: Toru Sakuradu, Matthew Wordsworth, Shizuko Noiri, Ireen Thomas -lute, Hannelore de Vaere -harp. But from 1999 on, recorder player Saskia Coolen became our regular partner. This program was sung in our first Institut Néelandais concert in Paris and in the Ambronay Festival.
We even sang it in the prestigeous Wiener Konzerthaus.

1996      Het Paradys (Paradise)
presented the progression of five generations Franco-Flemish composers following the feasts of the ecclesiastical year, from Advent to Pentecost. Organ players participating in the program were: Bas de Vroome, Herman Lammers and Willem Ceuleers.
Het Paradys was performed 13 times, and was the program for our first Utrecht Early Music Festival concert: 3-9-1999, in the Utrecht Pieterskerk.

Saskia Coolen

cd 1: venus-ghejancksel (1998)

Our first CD was released with considerable delay. Already recorded in 1996, it took some time to find eventually the right label. Et’cetera was interested en adventurous enough to give us a chance. It was a perfect match. We never left the label, and they always supported us unconditionally.

The result of the rather late release was that the CD was still the product of our first experimental years, before we decided to focus on Franco-Flemish repertoire, and by consequence quite eclectic.
Nevertheless on this first album some of the composers that played a leading role in the following curriculum of Egidius were already present: Clemens non Papa, Johannes Lupi, Orlandus Lassus and even Gheerkin de Hondt.

With Toyohiko Satoh - lute.
Recorded 1996 Power Studios Veenendaal, producer: Pieter Jan Leusink,
remaster: Peter de Groot & Hans Wijers. Edit-corrections: Tini Mathot.

1998 For the next Egidius concert programs and cd's we were in need of a fitting superius voice (soprano). We were so lucky and priveleged to add the Spanish soprano Maria Luz Alvarez as "the fitfth member" to our quartet.

here a sample of her beautiful voice, accompanied by the Egidius Viol Consort:

1999 Den Coninck van Hispanien (The king of Spain)
Music around the figure of Philip II of Spain, son of Charles V. The program gave asit where a musical biography: music written for his father, music Philip heard touring the Low Countries, music from the countries of his brides and of composers working for him at the Escorial. It was for this program that I made my very first transcription from an original source, Avecque vous by Nicolas Payen. A song that became an evergreen in the Egidius repertoire.

Murhardsche Bibliothek Kassel

cd 2: leal amour (1999)

Click here: Leal amour by Ph. Rogier

LEAL AMOUR, Flemish composers at the court of Philip II contains chansons and motets by Nicolas Gombert, Nicolas Payen, Pierre de Manchicourt, Gerard van Turnhout, Georges de la Hèle and Philippe Rogier, and two parts of the Missa Phillipus secundus by Philippe Rogier. All pieces on this cd were recorded for the first time ever.
With Maria Luz Alvarez (soprano) and Jan Caals (tenor)
Recording 20-23 january 1998, Church of Renswoude,
producer: Ted Diehl, engineer: Bert van der Wolf
prononciation coach: Rebecca Stewart
This CD is still obtainable via Et'cetera-records.com

Click here for Agnus dei II Missa Phillipus secundus by Ph. Rogier

1999      Chansons voor Karel (Songs for Charles V)
In 1999 we got an invitation from the Flanders Festival to prepare a concert program for the Charles V year 2000, they even provided a fund to cover the research. (those were the days!) During the research period we already put together a program with songs written for the Emperor and with songs that he might have heard during his lifetime. Music by Josquin, Gombert and Crecquillon of course, but also the just discovered and transcribed songs of Cornelius Canis and Nicolas Payen.

1999      Niederländer via Rom
For the Innsbruck Tage Alter Musik we prepared a program around composers from the Low Countries that travelled to and worked in Rome. Lots of Josquin and Lassus and no less than seven pieces bij Jacques Arcadelt. It turned out to be our longest program ever.

1999      Ronsard et les néerlandais
For the Utrecht Early Music Festival we made this program of Franco-Flemish composers using Ronsard’s poetry. We made our debut in the main hall of Vredenburg with, for the occasion, no one less than Harry van der Kamp reciting from the treatises by Ronsard on Music and Poetry.
The program was performed 10 times in the Netherlands and France, including the Ambronay and the Amiens Festival. It would take another five years before a CD of this program was released. (2004)

1999      Tota Vita
barely three weeks after the Ronsard premiere we presented the program made for the Charles V year of the Flanders Festival, in Gent of course, birth place of the Emperor. Almost all of the repertoire in this program was freshly digged up by me from several libraries, such as the title motet by Cornelius Canis Tota Vita. The program was, as we had done with Charles son Philip, a short biography in music, with an empahsis on his wife Elisabeth of Portugal and Charles' subsequent lifelong grief. To enhance this idea I decided to give the concert a special setting, with dim light and a table full of vanity symbols. To give the person of Charles V even more relief I asked the Belgian writer (and in those years still actor) Johan de Boose to recite fragments from the beautiful and melancholical poetry cycle on Charles V by Anton van Wilderode: De Vlinderboom.
Tota Vita was performed 10 times, was part of the series Network Early Music in Holland in 2000, and was presented at the Utrecht Early Music Festival.

1999      Egidius zingt Egidius (Egidius sings Egidius)
In the very charged summer of 1999 we managed even to prepare a third full concert program. This one was dedicated to the name-giving poem of our ensemble (see here). Two famous Dutch composers, Ton de Leeuw and Henk Badings, had already written great music on it, but we commissioned four new settings, by Daan Manneke (Ton de Leeuws pupil), the Belgian composer Walter Hus, and master arranger Jetse Bremer. Daan Mannekes pupil Bart Visman wrote the fourth, but he chose the second verse of the poem. The program was premiered in a series of concerts organized by the Music Centre in Den Bosch and the Dutch Broadcasting Society AVRO. The composition of Daan Manneke, called Tombeau, became a classic, and marked the beginning of a lasting friendship.
Egidius zingt Egidius was recorded in 2001 and released on CD in 2005.

1999      Obrecht, vier bier ! (Obrecht, four beers please!)
For PRATUM MUSICUM UTRECHT we put together an entertaining drinking song program, recycling old repertoire and adding some new songs, Fun, it was, indeed.

Albertina, Östereichische National bibliothek, Wien

Schloss Ambras

Johan de Boose as Charles V

Score and recording of Tombeau.

Probe im Schloss Ambras, grosser Saal

Isabella

Score and recording O aventure.

2000

CD 3: TOTA VITA, music for charles v

This CD, that contains most of the eponymous concert program of 1999, focused for the first time in recording history on two ‘forgotten’ composers at the court of Charles V: Cornelius Canos and the slightly younger Nicolas Payen, of whom we recorded with this CD all his surviving chansons (5) and three of his motets. The most interesting and moving piece by Payen is the plaint over the deceased wife of Charles, Isabella of Portugal, which bears the year of her death (1st of May 1531) as a chronogram in the text. I remember very well the moment that I started transcribing the lament; it gave me goosebumps instantly. No less than ten chansons of Canis are to be found on the disc and two of his motets, one of them gave the name to this CD, that opens with a “state motet” by Thomas Crecquillon and ends with the famous Cançion del Emperador : Mille regretz by Josquin des Prez for which I wrote an additional fifth voice.
With Maria Luz Alvarez (soprano) and Robert Getchell (tenor)
Recorded Gent, Episcopal Seminar, 27-30 september 1999
Producer: Michael Fields. Engineer: Chris Thorpe.
This record is still available on et'cetera-records.com
Listen HERE to the lament for Isabella
Charles, why dost thou bewail Isabel, why dost thou seek for her? She is alive and did not die, for she became the bride of the Lord.
Carole CVr defLes IsabeLLaM CVtVe reqVIrIt non obIIt reddIta sponsa DeI

Listen HERE to Ta bonne grace by Cornelius Canis
a canonical song for soprano, 3 countertenors and tenor

After the release of the Tota Vita CD I went to the library of Château de Chantilly to see the last, sixth, song known by Nicolas Payen Vien tost depiteux desconfort. It is incomplete, only the alto and bass partbooks are preserved. Via Internet I found the bass part (Royal Holloway University London), but to have also the alto part I had to go myself to this magnificent library. I transcribed it at the spot and reconstructed the missing superius and tenor parts later at home. We sang it in all the Tota Vita concerts.
A few years later, in 2006, Laura Pollie McDowell published the opera omnia of Nicolas Payen in the Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance series (available via this link) and she was glad with my modest contribution of the incomplete song to this RRMR volume and published it in the annex.

On the right the original bass part, the added Chantilly alto part and my reconstruction. Followed by another fine example of one of Payens rather bold chansons.

2000 Le cercle de Muiden
Because we toured the three different programs we made in 1999 we added only one new (occasional) program: Le cercle de Muiden. With mainly music to French poets like Ronsard and De Bellay, combined with Dutch poets that were highly inspired by their French predecessors and that gathered at the castle of Muiden in the 17th century: Hooft and Huygens, the latter wrote beautiful music to his poems as well, here sung by Johannette Zomer and accompanied by Pieter Dirksen.
The program was designed for an exhibition of the Fondation Custodia at Hôtel Turgot, right behind the Institut Néerlandais. The program contained also a composition by Johan Albert Ban (1597-1644) I found in the archives of this remarkable museum.

Egidus on the stairs of Hôtel Turgot,
with three special ladies, from left to right:
Maartje Nelissen -music programmer Institut Néerlandais, Maria Van Berghe-Gerbaud -curator Fondation Custodia, Johannette Zomer -soprano.

Rehearsal with Johannette Zomer and Pieter Dirksen
at Hôtel Turgot