Brilliant Classics

Blind from childhood, Antonio de Cabezòn (b.1510) was was appointed organist in the chapel of Queen Isabella at the age of 16, and in 1538, became músico de la cámara to her husband Charles V. After Isabella's death he was appointed the musical tutor of Prince Philip and his sisters. Cabezòn accompanied Philip on trips to Milan, Naples, Germany and the Netherlands between 1548 and 1551. These tours would doubtless have given him exposure to a wide range of music performed by leading musicians of the period. His music reveals both cosmopolitanism and traits that have been identified as belonging distinctly to Spanish musical style or to a personal style.

This complete recorded survey of his Obras de música para tecla arpa y vihuela represents one of the most remarkable, and celebrated collections of instrumental music of the sixteenth-century. The collection divides by genre into instrumental elaborations of liturgical texts; intabulations and transcriptions of popular motets by composers such as Mouton and Josquin; and the famous and original tientos, prized for their combination of the composer's intensity of expression with a good deal of variety and ingenuity.

The performances on a variety of instruments and ensembles are masterminded by the Italian keyboard player and musicologist Claudio Astronio, whose musical enthusiasms range from early music to jazz and pop.

Other information:
- A new and original INTEGRALE of Brilliant Classics, the only available complete recording, recorded in 1995--2010.
- Excellent liner notes written by Spanish musicologist Andrew Woolley
- Cabezon was a master of the keyboard (organ and spinet), and most of his works are instrumental, either solo keyboard or for ensembles of stringed instruments.
- A unique survey of an important era in the musical history, played by expert musicians, using period instruments: Claudio Astronio and his Harmonices Mundi.