Long before Santa Claus

For listeners who are tired of medieval kitsch and feel that music from that period does not need the addition of distantly related instruments and stylistic devices from other cultures or periods in order to be enjoyed; for these listeners, the Basel ensemble Peregrina under the direction of Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett has been a safe haven since its foundation in 1997.

Your CD Miraculawhich collects music in honor of St. Nicholas from different centuries, is in the best tradition of this ensemble. The sound of the female voices and the instruments is close, warm, not too reverberant; the program carefully selected and arranged. The instrumentation is varied: sometimes one voice is accompanied by the instruments, sometimes there is a vocal solo, sometimes a question and answer game between the lead singer and the tutti (in an ensemble with three female singers, it would be wrong to speak of a "choir"). In the first monophonic pieces, the ear becomes so attuned and begins to perceive such subtle differences that the two-part harmony (in the beautiful Conductus Gaudens in domino / Iube domne silencium) seems downright overwhelming. Dance movements (such as the Estampite Nicholaus inclitus, Track 11) are also represented alongside the vocal pieces.

Because St. Nicholas was widely venerated then as now, the pieces come from all over Europe. From Switzerland, the St. Gallen Benedicamus-Tropus Nicholai sollempnia can be heard (track 21). In short, with 27 tracks there is music for every taste. The last three tracks on an almost identical Tropus text (Benedicamus devotis mentibus) provide a small surprise: the last was composed in Verona around 1500 and proves that the taste for "simple" polyphony was preserved far beyond the boundaries of the Middle Ages.

Minor carelessness in the editing of the booklet leads to the only unfavorable remarks in this review: a typo has occurred on the back cover of all places (Miralula), and the sequence of the tracks in the booklet does not quite correspond to the sequence on the CD (tracks 11 and 12 are reversed), which can cause slight confusion.