Stella Maris is the third ECM New Series album by Trio Mediaeval, following Words of the Angel (2001) and Soir, dit-elle (2004). It sets sacred songs of the 12th and 13th centuries, from England and from the Notre Dame school in Paris, beside a contemporary mass for three voices. That work, Missa Lumen de lumine by the Korean composer Sungji Hong, was written for the trio in 2002 and dedicated to them, and it gives the record its modern centre of gravity.
The three singers are Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Østrem Ossum. The bass John Potter, who produced the session, adds the long held tenor notes of O Maria, stella maris, the only male voice on the disc. The album was recorded in February 2005 at the Propstei St. Gerold in Austria, with Peter Laenger as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. Nicky Losseff prepared the editions of the medieval pieces and wrote the booklet notes.
The medieval half is built on contrast. Anonymous English pieces of the 13th century such as Flos regalis virginalis and Quem trina polluit move in sweet, mostly chordal writing, often in a lilting triple time. Against them stand the Parisian works, more dissonant and contrapuntal, above all Perotin's Dum sigillum, which unfolds over almost ten minutes. Dou way Robyn / Sancta Mater appears in the trio's own arrangement. Hong's mass, placed at the end in its five movements, weaves interlocking lines that fuse into chant-like unisons and then split apart again. Its idiom borrows medieval gestures but keeps a modern harmonic grammar, and it exploits the full range of three high voices.
The album was a Choral & Song Choice in BBC Music Magazine, where Barry Witherden described the mass as "a work of iridescent freshness". In the Daily Telegraph, Elizabeth Roche wrote of "the distinctively pure, cool sound of Trio Mediaeval's three female voices". Not every critic was won over by the calm of the performances: Gary Higginson of MusicWeb International found the tempi too unhurried and the programme too uniform, yet praised the singers and singled out the Gloria of the Hong mass as the high point.
CD edition, ECM New Series 1929, released on 26 September 2005, with liner notes by Nicky Losseff.
