EMA Recording & Book Reviews

An imaginative new album is devoted to music by Heinrich von Meissen, a minstrel poet from Saxony, known as Frauenlob for his praise of the Virgin Mary. Harpist and soprano Anna O'Connell and friends offer his spiritual, often mystical works alongside religious music from other German sources including Hildegard and Oswald von Wolkenstein.

A beautifully illustrated 2026 Arthurian video game, 'Legends of the Round Table,' with narration from Boston Camerata's Anne Azéma, sets a new high standard. The period instruments and repertoire supports the plot and visuals for an absorbing game experience.

In 1791, Muzio Clementi published an edition of Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas, designed for performance by the nascent piano-forte. A recording of this edition, on a lovely square piano of the period—discovered languishing in a California antique shop—tells its own remarkable tale.

The co-editors of this book of essays, Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, have collected a multitude of narratives addressing how outsiders transformed the fabric of Indonesian musical history. Notably, Busse Berger has spent most of her career working in early-music scholarship; she now exemplifies the trend toward expanding the definition of early music to a global scale.

A new recording of golden-age viola da gamba music, highlighted by Marin Marais and Antoine Fourqueray, makes for a rewarding debut album. Pairing the viol with just a single theorbo, intriguingly, allows for easy, conversational flow between the two musicians.

Anyone curious about the phenomenal growth of early music in the last decades of the 20th century is bound to run across the name David Munrow. In his short but ebullient career, just nine years, the English musician, scholar, and entrepreneur arguably did more than anyone to create the early-music scene we know today.

In 18th- and 19th-century Europe (and colonial culture in the Americas), dancing was used to make social connections and impress members of one's class. 'Dance and Sociability' offers detailed descriptions of the social context for European dance among the upper classes during this period, including a thought-provoking article on how to define “grace.”

Great artists express their identities through their art, yet many artists are forced to live in a society that does not accept their true identity. 'Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos,' from Sonnambula, an ensemble of violins, viols, and keyboard, explores works by a range of such societal outcasts from the 16th and 17th centuries.

New recordings of Bach's 'Saint Matthew Passion' continue to come at us apace. The latest, from the Bay Area's Cantata Collective, is highlighted by stellar vocal soloists and by Nicholas McGegan's emotionally subtle conducting.

Searching for music actually linked to the late-14th c. 'Canterbury Tales,' Elisabeth Ellison found almost none. So she searched the archives and found dance tunes and sacred works that Geoffrey Chaucer and his pilgrims may have heard in their own day.