This work is a contribution to the homage arranged by the Ensemble Recherche in honour of Harry Vogt, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his work at the head of the contemporary chamber music festival in Witten, Germany. The Ensemble Recherche suggested using the fifty-four-note cantus firmus from the plainchant found for the first time in the Benedictus of the In nomine Domini mass by the English composer John Taverner (c.1490-1545), as a common theme for the composers associated with the Witten In Nomine Broken Consort Book. After Taverner, the In nominee 'theme' was used again in the early Tudor period, not only in England, and many times thereafter, right up to the 20th century, as in Richard Strauss's Die schweigsame Frau, and the work of Peter Maxwell Davies. These composers are now joined by all those who have taken part in the Recherche project, namely Hugues Dufourt, Brian Ferneyhough, Klaus Huber, Gyorgy Kurtag, Brice Pauset, Wolfgang Rihm, Johannes Schöllhorn, Salvatore Sciarrino and Hans Zender.
Gérard Pesson
Translated by Mary Criswick
Recording
1 CD aeon, AE0106, Mes béatitudes
Ensemble Recherche
