Download Aires et danses pours les instrumens anciens (mp3, 6.3 MB)
Aires et danses pour les instrumens anciens by A Nomolos
Download Aires et danses pours les instrumens anciens (mp3, 6.3 MB)
In the music of Aires et Danses I pay homage to the songs and instrumental music of the Medieval Age. What we know of that music reveals to us a simplicity and charm seldom found in later periods. Rather than attempt vain imitations of that ancient music, I have taken what I have learned of medieval musical forms and characteristics and transmuted them into shapes pleasing to my twenty-first century sensibilities; at the same time preserving an ideal of simplicty and modality— I hope!
Aires et Danses consists of five short and separate movements: two song-like 'aires' and three rhythmical 'danses'. While nearly all of the secular music of that age seems to have been monophonic, just two of the five movements herein (Danse II and Danse III) are strictly so; the remainder employ only spare and simple harmonies.The instrumentation requires les instrumens anciens: soprano and tenor recorders, a fiddle, a soprano shawm, a lute, deep- and high-toned drums, triangle, and a drone instrument (bagpipe, portative, bass viol, etc).
The calligraphic ornament above is based on a fourteenth-century design detail appearing in Plate No. 11 of W. R. Tymms, The Art of Illuminating as Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times ... (London: Day and Son, 1860.) The roundel frames above were derived from a fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript depicting the "Vision of Isaiah" attributed to Girolamo Da Cremona, now housed in the Libreria Piccolomini, Duomo, Siena.
