Le nozze in Baviera Ensemble Origo & Eric Rice

• Orlande de Lassus (1532 - 1594):
• 1 Lassus: Selectissimae cantiones, LV 1568.3: No. 37, Te Deum laudamus (Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble) 15:24
• 2 Lassus: Gratia sola Dei, LV 364 (Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble) 09:02
• Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts):
• 3 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 16, Álla la, pia calia 02:15
• 4 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 21, Canta, Giorgia, canta [Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 02:23
• 5 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 7, Hai Lucia, bona cosa [Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 02:42
• 6 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 13, Lucia celu hai biscania 03:27
• Orlande de Lassus:
• 7 Lassus: Il terzo libro delle villotte alla napoletana: No. 1, O Lucia, miau, miau (Arr. E. Rice for 2 Voices & Alto Viola da gamba) 02:29
• Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts):
• 8 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 18, Cathalina apra finestra [Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 04:48
• 9 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 20, Chi chi li chi [Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 03:12
• 10 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 12, Matona, mia cara (Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 02:55
• Orlande de Lassus
• 11 Lassus: Terzo libro di madrigali: No. 20, Se si alto pôn gir mie stanche rime 02:46
• Filippo Azzaiolo (1530 - 1570):
• 12 Azzaiolo: Villotte alla Padoana: No. 1, Chi passa per 'sta strada (1557 Version) [Arr. E. Rice for Voice & Lute] 01:53
• Orlande de Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts):
• 13 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 17, Mi me chiamere [Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 02:21
• 14 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 6, Par ch'hai lasciato [Arr. E. Rice for Vocal & Instrumental Ensemble] 03:02
• 15 Lassus: Libro de villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (Excerpts): No. 23, Zanni! Piasi, patrò? 02:16
• Total Runtime 01:00:55

Info for Le nozze in Baviera

The wedding in 1568 of Renate of Lorraine to Wilhelm V, heir to the throne of the Duke of Bavaria, was a sumptuous, 18-day spectacular designed to rival those of the Italian courts. Orlande de Lassus had been the court’s maestro di cappella since 1556. Using an eye-witness account of the event, Ensemble Origo presents a hypothetical reconstruction of some of his musical contributions – a Te Deum, the moresca (a genre related to the villanella), and an improvised comedy – thereby shedding light on some of the various meanings that the music had for its 16th-century listeners. Ensemble Origo is an early music ensemble founded in 2010 and directed by Connecticut-based musicologist and conductor Eric Rice. Its aim is to present vibrant performances and recordings of early music – from the Middle Ages through to the Baroque – that reflect the context in which the repertory was originally produced and heard; ‘Origo’ is Latin for ‘earliest beginning’, ‘lineage’, or ‘origin’. The ensemble draws on a roster of musicians from Connecticut, Boston, and New York.

Ensemble Origo
Eric Rice, conductor

Ensemble Origo
Hailed as “a fine, flexible ensemble” by The New York Times, Ensemble Origo is an early music organization founded in 2011 and directed by Connecticut-based musicologist and conductor Eric Rice. Its aim is to present vibrant performances of early music (from the Middle Ages through the baroque) that reflect the context in which the repertory was originally produced and heard; “Origo” is Latin for “earliest beginning,” “lineage,” or “origin.” The ensemble draws on a roster of professional musicians from Connecticut, Boston, and New York. Its debut recording, released on the Naxos label in January 2021, is “Le nozze in Baviera – Orlando di Lasso’s Music for the 1568 Wedding of Wilhelm V of Bavaria and Renate of Lorraine. It includes Lasso’s moresche — settings of texts uttered in Neapolitan dialect by enslaved Africans from the Bornu Empire. Another recording still in post-production is "Martin Luther's Deutsche Messe," a reconstruction of a mass as it might have been performed in Martin Luther's orbit ca. 1530, which grew out of a concert program commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017. A third recording project in post-production is “The Last Imperial Coronation – Music for the 1530 Coronation of Charles V in Bologna”; a collaboration with the Greenhouse Studios at the University of Connecticut on a multi-modal virtual reality presentation of the same event.

Eric Rice
Musicologist and conductor Eric Rice is a specialist in the history and performance of music composed before 1750. The 2019 recipient of Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award, he is Head of the Music Department at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, where he teaches music history, notation, and historical performance. He has published on medieval and Renaissance liturgical music and its relationship to architecture, politics, and secular music. In addition to his work with Ensemble Origo, hewas Artistic Director of the Connecticut Early Music Festival and music director and tenor in the Boston-based ensemble Exsultemus. He earned his PhD at Columbia University, where he studied with Leeman Perkins and Susan Boynton, and his AB in English and music at Bowdoin College, where he studied with William Watterson and Robert Greenlee.

Booklet for Le nozze in Baviera