Schola Hungarica / Dobszay, Laszlo / Szendrei, Janka - Poliphonic Vespers For St. Martin's And St. Michael's Days (CD)

The CD has two vespers from 15th-16th cent manuscripts from Bratislava, for the feasts of Saint Martin and Saint MichaelIn 1571, a widow called Anna Hannsen Schuman donated a highly valuable manuscript to the collegiate chapter of Pozsony (at the time the most important city in Hungary not under Turkish domination, now Bratislava in Slovakia), named after Saint Martin. The codex contains 239 polyphonic works, almost all for the enrichment of evening office of vespers. The composers of some works can be identified (Mouton, Isaac, Finck, Morales, Walther, etc.) but most of the pieces are anonymous. The manuscript was actually in daily use: the pieces, in the German-Flemish style of the time, and mostly short, could be interpolated between the movements of the Gregorian vespers on feastdays, clearly selecting them to match the abilities of the singing group available at the time. The annotations made later into the music show that the manuscript was actually used, and this is witness to t