With the release of this new recording dedicated to Heinrich Isaac, in memory of the 500th anniversary of his death, ALIA VOX pays tribute to one of the greatest Renaissance composers. Isaac was born in Brabant but spent most of his life travelling around Europe, first to the court of Burgundy, the Austria, and finally Italy and Germany. At the invitation of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1488, he moved to Florence, the city he continued to call home through all his subsequent travels, and where he became a highly regarded and much admired member of the Medici court. Some years after Lorenzo’s death in 1492, he also became the principal composer at the court of emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg until his own death, and, whatever his extensive travels from one court to another, spent most of his time in Florence. The programme of this album is conceived as a “life in music” that could illustrate, within the short space of a recording, the immense richness and creative diversity of this great Renaissance composer. ALIA VOX also offers a short chronological evocation of some of the key events in his life, as well as the key moments in history for which his music was composed or performed; these works include A la battaglia, which illustrates the battle between Genoa and Florence for the control of Sarzanello castle, and Quis dabit capiti meo aquam, a deeply moving lamento on the occasion of Lorenzo’s death. And since the musical journey begins with Isaac’s own birth, Jordi Savall and the musiciens of the ensembles La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Hespèrion XXI have had to slightly bend the chronological musical narrative, choosing to illustrate the early years Isaac’s life with some of his owb most beautiful compositions (naturally written several years later). A special mention goes for the song Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen written 1484, and later adopted by the Reformation under the shape and name of the chorale O welt, ich muß dich lassen which Bach himself used in both his Passions. © SM/Qobuz