Officium (album)

Officium
Live album by Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble
Released	1994
Recorded	September 1993, Propstei St. Gerold, Austria
Genre	Jazz, Gregorian chant
Length	77:34
Label	ECM New Series ECM 1523 NS
Producer	Manfred Eicher
Jan Garbarek chronology
Twelve Moons (1992) Officium (1994) Visible World (1995)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]

Officium is an album by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek and early music vocal group The Hilliard Ensemble, that was released in 1994. The album was recorded at the monastery of Propstei St. Gerold in Austria.

Reception

Allmusic awarded the album with 3½ stars and its review by Richard S. Ginell states: "Recorded in a heavily reverberant Austrian monastery, the voices sometimes develop in overwhelming waves, and Garbarek rides their crest, his soprano saxophone soaring in the monastery acoustic, or he underscores the voices almost unobtrusively, echoing the voices, finding ample room to move around the modal harmonies yet applying his sound sparingly."^[1] Marius Gabriel remarked that Officium is "what Coltrane hears in heaven." ^[2]

Brought together by Manfred Eicher, this collaboration has become one of the most successful releases on the ECM label, achieving sales of more than 1.5 million.^[3] Following a number of successful concert tours, a second collaborative album, Mnemosyne, was released in 1999. Officium Novum, another sequel album, was released in September 2010.^[4]

Track listing

1. "Parce mihi domine" (Christóbal de Morales) - 6:42
2. "Primo tempore" (Anonymous) - 8:03
3. "Sanctus" (Anonymous) - 4:44
4. "Regnanten Sempiterna" (Anonymous) - 5:36
5. "O Salutaris Hostia" (Pierre de la Rue) - 4:34
6. "Procedentem sponsum" (Anonymous) - 2:50
7. "Pulcherrima rosa" (Anonymous) - 6:55
8. "Parce mihi domine" (de Morales) - 5:35
9. "Beata viscera" (Magister Perotinus) - 6:34
10. "De spineto nata rosa" (Anonymous) - 2:30
11. "Credo" (Anonymous) - 2:06
12. "Ave maris stella" (Guillaume Dufay) - 4:14
13. "Virgo flagellatur" (Anonymous) - 5:19
14. "Oratio Ieremiae" (Anonymous) - 5:00
15. "Parce mihi domine" (de Morales) - 6:52

• Recorded: September 1993 at Propstei St. Gerold, Austria
• Tonmeister: Peter Laenger

Personnel

• The Hilliard Ensemble
  • David James - countertenor
  • Rogers Covey-Crump - tenor
  • John Potter - tenor
  • Gordon Jones - baritone
• Jan Garbarek - soprano and tenor saxophones

References

1. Ginell, R. S.Allmusic Review: Officium accessed 11 March 2010
2. What Coltrane hears in heaven by Marius Gabriel
3. In Conversation With Jan Garbarek, jazz.com
4. Information on new CD Officium Novum