Musique hollandaise au 17e siècle à l'Âge d'or de Rembrandt

Description

This superb anthology of music from the Netherlands during the time of Rembrandt fills a gap in the current discography, introducing us to little-known or completely unknown composers, performed here by the excellent interpreters of the Dutch Ensemble Amphion, who have delighted us with numerous superb recordings. Not that Rembrandt is known to have been a discerning music lover (there are no known musician friends of his, and he never painted any famous composers), but the period that encompasses his life spans from the late Renaissance to the flourishing Baroque, and is overshadowed by that of the immense Constantin Huygens (1596-1687), who appears here as a composer with three sacred airs for voice and bc, and a secular air on a French text. Among his many activities, he supported the career of Rembrandt, and later that of Carel Hacquart, whose beautiful sonata for string ensemble shows a clear kinship with those of Biber or his Austro-German contemporaries. Alongside the great Sweelinck, the dances for consort, songs, psalms, and pieces for lute, harpsichord, or organ, as well as the trio or solo sonatas of all these forgotten musicians brilliantly prove that the United Provinces, a crossroads of Europe, managed to blend English, French, Italian, and German influences, leading to the Goûts Réunis before the term even existed. (Jean-Michel Babin-Goasdoué)