The Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice – La Rue: Missa Nuncqua fue pena mayor & Missa Inviolata (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:55 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

The career of Pierre de la Rue was a highly distinguished one, though it took a somewhat different form from those of many contemporaries who sought their fortune south of the Alps. From 1492 until 1516 La Rue was the pre-eminent composer at the Habsburg-Burgundian court at Brussels-Mechelen, presided over by Duke Philip ‘the Fair’ of Burgundy, and subsequently by his sister Marguerite of Austria. His position at the court led (eventually) to the award of numerous benefices—the rights to revenues from clerical positions, which could be held plurally and vicariously—such that he died, in 1518, a wealthy man. Although he did not quite achieve the Europe-wide fame of his contemporary Josquin Des Prez, or certainly that later enjoyed by Orlande de Lassus, such renown was not at that time a direct measure of professional success. Both of the latter composers benefited, at least in reputational terms, from the spread of music printing across the Continent; La Rue’s work was printed a dozen times in his lifetime and many more thereafter, but its most numerous sources are manuscripts, notably those of the so-called ‘Alamire’ scriptorium, based at his home institution and in which he is the best-represented composer of all

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