This disc was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance." Selections recorded at Skywalker Sound, Nicasio, California and Mastersound Astoria, Queens, New York. In concert, the Kronos Quartet has the uncanny ability to assemble great programs of varied compositions. Who would have guessed that mixing Terry Riley with Arvo Pärt and Jimi Hendrix would create a perfect concert recipe? In EARLY MUSIC, they have done it again. All of the mostly-short works on this album are intertwined by there relationship to real or imagined "ancient" music. Selections by Machaut are followed by John Cage, which are in turn followed by anonymous eastern religious music. Furthermore, in many of the selections, the quartet is joined by special instruments, including drums, harmonium and Tuvan throat singers. Together these elements comprise an album that flows from beginning to end like a rhapsodic dream, each scene melting into the next. Kronos plays mostly without vibrato in an effort to purify their pitch, and the result is that suddenly your living room becomes a darkened arched cathedral, where music that was performed last year and last millennium mingles in the air and returns to your ear, rich, beautiful and personal. This is not a recording that any other quartet could accomplish.
Disc 1: Kyrie I Studies (2) On Ancient Greek Scales Psalom Långdans Efter Byfåns Mats Lachrimae Or Seaven Teares: Lachrimae Antiquae Totem Ancestor For Prepared Piano O Virtus Sapientiae In Nomine "Rachells Weepinge" Kyrie II Brudmarsch Frä Östa Using The Apostate Tyrant As His Tool Synchrony No 2 Quod Libet Viderunt Omnes Kyrie III Fantasia For 4 Viols In B Flat Major, Z 736 Long-Ge Uleg-Khem In Nomine "Farewell My Good 1, For Ever"" Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled With Grief Requiem: Bells - Tolling Of The Knell