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Officium
Officium
Live album by Jan Garbarek & the Hilliard Ensemble
Released	September 1994
Recorded	September 1993
Venue	Propstei St. Gerold; Austria
Genre	Jazz, Gregorian chant
Length	77:34
Label	ECM New Series; ECM 1525
Producer	Manfred Eicher
Jan Garbarek chronology

Officium is an album by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek and British male vocal quartet Hilliard Ensemble recorded at the monastery of Propstei St. Gerold in Austria in September 1993 and released on ECM the following year.

Background

Brought together by producer Manfred Eicher, this collaboration—based on 12th- to 16th-century liturgical works by composers including Cristóbal de Morales and Perotinus Magnus^[2]—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 followed by Officium Novum (2010) and Remember me, my dear (2019).^[4]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	^[5]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings	^[6]

AllMusic awards the album with 3½ stars and Richard S. Ginell's review says: "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."^[5]

Marius Gabriel remarked that Officium is "what Coltrane hears in heaven".^[7]

Track listing

"Parce mihi domine" (from the Officium Defunctorum by Cristóbal de Morales) – 6:42
"Primo tempore" (Anonymous) – 8:03
"Sanctus" (Anonymous) – 4:44
"Regnanten Sempiterna" (Anonymous) – 5:36
"O Salutaris Hostia" (Pierre de la Rue) – 4:34
"Procedentem sponsum" (Anonymous) – 2:50
"Pulcherrima rosa" (Anonymous) – 6:55
"Parce mihi domine" (de Morales) – 5:35
"Beata viscera" (Magister Perotinus) – 6:34
"De spineto nata rosa" (Anonymous) – 2:30
"Credo" (Anonymous) – 2:06
"Ave maris stella" (Guillaume Du Fay) – 4:14
"Virgo flagellatur" (Anonymous) – 5:19
"Oratio Ieremiae" (Anonymous) – 5:00
"Parce mihi domine" (de Morales) – 6:52

Personnel

Musicians

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

Technical personnel

Peter Laenger – tonmeister

Certifications


Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Netherlands (NVPI)^[8]	Gold	50,000^{^}
Norway (IFPI Norway)^[9]	Gold	25,000^*
Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)^[10]	Gold	25,000^{^}
United Kingdom (BPI)^[11]	Gold	100,000^{^}
^* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^{^} Shipments figures based on certification alone.