La Quintina & Jérémie Couleau - Ymaginacions (2023)

This new album is conceived as a mirror of our previous disc. Our aim is not so much to recreate a religious office but, rather, a concert programme in which the innovations of John Dunstable, Nicholas Ludford and William Whitbroke converse with our ymaginacions.

We hope, with our ensemble La Quintina, to have modestly contributed to the discovery of a little-known corpus of English renaissance music. This, our second disc, is the fruit of a decade-long immersion in the style of Nicholas Ludford, an immersion that was necessary in order to reconstruct its counterpoints, however artistically challenging. We have the impression of having mastered the fertile square and hope that other ensembles will continue this work on the other Lady Masses by this composer. There is so much to be done! La Quintina acknowledges all those who have closely contributed to our elaboration of this English epic: our friends in the Ensemble Scandicus, Gérard Geay for his work on the musica ficta in the Missa Feria II, and Paul Willenbrock for his astute advice on the pronunciation of early English and English Latin.

The French ensemble La Quintina, founded in 2019 and led by tenor Jérémie Couleau, is once again dedicating itself to the English Renaissance master Nicholas Ludford. His "Mass upon John Dunstable's Square" is based on a theme (Square) by John Dunstable, an English composer of the early Renaissance who lived 100 years before Ludford. The special ensemble, a vocal trio with organist, does not attempt to imitate a church service, but enters into a lively dialog with the musical inventions of Dunstable and Ludford with its inspirations called Ymaginacions.

Tracklist
01. Anonymous: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Nowel syng we bothe al and som
02. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Kyrie
03. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Gloria
04. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Alleluya. Post partum Virgo
05. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Sequentia. Post partum Virgo
06. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Credo
07. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Glose sur Afferentur regi virgines
08. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Sanctus
09. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Agnus dei
10. Whitbroke: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Ite missa est
11. Ludford: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: Glose sur Bryd one brere
12. Anonymous: Mass upon John Dunstable's square: An Hevenly Songe