Huelgas Ensemble present the big discovery of 2024: music by Blasius Ammon. The Austrian composer (c. 1560-1590) began his musical career as a choirboy at the court chapel of Archduke Ferdinand II in Innsbruck, where he learned his trade from the Flemish Kapellmeister Alexander Utendal. His next mentor was Andrea Gabrieli, one of the masters of the Venetian School. Upon returning to Vienna, Ammon joined the franciscan order. All these paths in life came together in his appointment as singing master at the franciscan monastery of Heiligenkreuz around 1585.
Ammon hardly reached the age of 30, but during that short life, he distinguished himself internationally with an impressive volume of high-quality music that was in great demand on the music market. It was no surprise, then, that five collections consisting entirely of his own compositions were published in just ten years! Phalesius published the anthology Florilegium sacrarum in Antwerp in 1609, which also contains work by Ammon. It is dominated by two styles: the Franco-Flemish technique of imitation and Venetian polychoral style. Ammon was a virtuoso master of the former, and the first German-speaking composer to employ the latter. ‘Astonishingly original,’ was Paul Van Nevel’s impression. He has created an anthology with his Huelgas Ensemble that includes a seven-part Missa quatuor vocum pro defunctis and a selection of motets from the collection Sacrae cantiones (Vienna, 1590).
Program
B. Ammon: Missa Quatuor vocum pro defunctis, motets from Sacrae Cantiones (1590)
Performers
Malwine Nicolaus, Hannah Ely, Helen Cassano, Witte Maria Weber, cantus | Paul Bentley-Angell, Daniel Thomson, Ozan Karagöz, George Pooley, Tom Phillips, tenor | Hidde Kleikamp, baritone | Robert Macdonald, Andrés Soler Castaño, bass | Paul Van Nevel, artistic leader
