Secret History: Josquin & Victoria John Potter

• Jean Mouton (1459 - 1522):
• 1 Nesciens Mater 03:24
• Jacob Heringman (?):
• 2 Prelude I 00:25
• Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548 - 1611):
• 3 1. Kyrie 02:46
• Jacob Heringman:
• 4 Prelude II 00:36
• Tomas Luis de Victoria:
• 5 2. Gloria 05:56
• Jacob Heringman:
• 6 Prelude III 00:22
• Tomas Luis de Victoria:
• 7 3. Credo 10:24
• Jacob Heringman:
• 8 Prelude IV 00:26
• Tomas Luis de Victoria:
• 9 4a. Sanctus 01:52
• 10 4b. Benedictus 01:51
• Jacob Heringman:
• 11 Prelude V 00:27
• Tomas Luis de Victoria:
• 12 5. Agnus Dei 03:25
• Anonymous:
• 13 Inviolata (Chant) 01:19
• Josquin Desprez (1450 - 1521):
• 14 Inviolata 03:10
• 15 Absalon, Fili Mi 03:33
• Anonymous:
• 16 Obsecro Te (Chant) 00:37
• Josquin Desprez:
• 17 Obsecro Te 05:42
• 18 Salve Regina 06:40
• Anonymous:
• 19 Benedicta Es (Chant) 01:53
• Josquin Desprez:
• 20 Benedicta Es 06:07
• 21 Nymphes De Bois 04:29
• Tomas Luis de Victoria:
• 22 O Magnum Mysterium 03:07
• Total Runtime 01:08:31

Info for Secret History: Josquin & Victoria

Tomas Luis de Victoria and Josquin Desprez were not contemporaries, they lived and worked in different countries, and perhaps shared little in terms of abstract compositional style.

Yet throughout Europe, generations of musicians recognized them as kindred spirits, and tablature versions of their masses and motets circulated amongst lutenists. For tenor John Potter, this is “the secret life of the music - in historical terms its real life”. In this characteristically creative project, Potter - joined by Trio Mediaeval singer Anna Maria Friman and three outstanding vihuela players - explores “what happens to music after it is composed”.

The album, produced by Manfred Eicher, was recorded at the St Gerold monastery in the Austrian mountains, where Potter previously contributed to Officium and other recordings with the Hilliard Ensemble and with The Dowland Project.

John Potter, voice
Anna Maria Friman, voice
Ariel Abramovich, alto, tenor and bass vihuelas
Jacob Heringman, tenor and bass vihuelas
Lee Santana, alto and tenor vihuelas
Hille Perl, viola da gamba (on tracks 21, 22)

John Potter
Potter's multifarious musical collaborators include lutenists Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman, the Dowland Project with John Surman and Milos Valent, the composer Ambrose Field and the Conductus Ensemble with fellow tenors Christopher O'Gorman and Rogers Covey-Crump. A writer and scholar as well as a singer, he has published four books on singing and is a former British Library Edison Fellow. He is Reader Emeritus in Music at the University of York, having left the university in 2010 to focus on his portfolio of freelance projects. His non-performing activities have included publishing articles and research papers, examining doctoral theses in Europe and the UK and coaching ensembles in Europe and the USA.

John's eclectic performing experience has ranged from first performances of works by Berio, Stockhausen, James Dillon, Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars and Michael Finnissy to backing vocals for Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield and The Who (among others). Red Byrd, the group he founded with bass Richard Wistreich, recorded music as diverse as Monteverdi (both straight and with electric guitars), Leonin (3 albums for Hyperion) and John Paul Jones (for Factory Records). He was a major contributor to the Hilliard Ensemble's Officium project (for which he has five gold discs), and subsequently developed many of the ideas in The Dowland Project's four albums for ECM. He also produced the first three ECM albums by the Scandinavian Trio Mediaeval.

Current projects include an ensemble with Anna Maria Friman, Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman devoted to new music for voices & lutes by Sting, Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, and early twentieth composers (as featured on the ECM album Amores Pasados). The Conductus ensemble has released three CDs on Hyperion and is exploring new 14 th century repertoires, and John’s solo song programmes with one and two lutes focus on the 2017 centenaries of Thomas Campion and Peter Pope in addition to his explorations of the further shores of the lute song repertoire.

Booklet for Secret History: Josquin & Victoria