Caleidoscopio

Description

2nd album for the Comet Musicke ensemble after "Quinze" dedicated to Gilles de Bins known as Binchois and Johannes Ockeghem, Caleidoscopio takes us on a journey through the music of Diego Ortiz, a great Spanish master of the Renaissance.
Diego Ortiz is well known among instrumentalists who practice early music for his Treatise on Glosas from 1553 and his famous virtuosic diminutions; however, his sacred work gathered in the Musices Liber Primus from 1565 has almost fallen into oblivion.
This recording is therefore an opportunity to rediscover, among a selection of very rare motets, 4 masterpieces completely unheard on record.
Ortiz demonstrates his mastery of polyphony, a synthesis of multiple influences from the Franco-Flemish school to Spanish songs. It also showcases the rhythmic inventiveness of the diminutions, highlighted by the use of instruments to double or replace sung voices, as the author suggests in his preface.
Polyphonic songs, organ pieces played in string consort, or embellished madrigals complete this unprecedented portrait where virtuosity serves a richly ornamented composition.
With a formation consisting of voices and melodic instruments, we sought to build a kaleidoscope that reveals a sound portrait of Diego Ortiz by assembling, through very varied instrumentations aimed at highlighting the counterpoint, pieces of equally diverse nature, organized around his recercadas and motets. By placing these works back in their context - integrating works by Hernando de Cabezon, Jacques Arcadelt, and Francisco Guerrero among others into the program - and refusing to order them according to their sacred or profane character, we hope to share with the 21st-century listener a more complete vision of one of the most remarkable composers of the 16th century.