HAVPCD187 – What is our life? Renaissance Laments and Elegies
One of the major concerns of artists of all kinds during the Renaissance was human mortality and transience, and the insignificance of worldly achievement. These themes are encapsulated in Sir Walter Raleigh’s poem What is our life?, and feature in many laments and elegies of the period. They were particularly appropriate when the subject of an elegy was a person of power and rank, whose humbling by Death was thereby all the more telling.
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HAVPCD183 – Carl Rütti: Lieder der Liebe Songs of Love
‘I wrote the seven Songs of Love based on the famous Song of Songs by King Solomon for the occasion of our wedding anniversary in 1993. When I wrote them, I had an English choir in mind, and I added a cello, because this is my wife’s favourite instrument. With Cambridge Voices and Veronica Henderson, a cellist with choral experience, I found the ideal interpretation. The songs are written in four different languages: Latin, German, English, and French, because these are languages we both like. The reason for choosing a special language for a song is the beauty of the words and the character of the translation. The passages describing the beauty of the beloved are so wonderful in all four languages that I had to take them all.’ (Carl Rütti)
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