Lisa Colton
Fourteenth-century music
When Machaut wrote that there is no instrument – whether woodwind, keyed, or stringed –
whose existence does not depend on Music, he was surely referencing musical sounds with
which he was intimately familiar. It is easy to associate medieval music with only two
contrasting sound worlds: the unaccompanied liturgical song of churches and monasteries,
and the earthy instrumental music associated predominately with recreational settings. The
recordings discussed here show more nuanced approaches to both religious and secular
music, with some of the most effective combining voices and instruments with subtlety and
imagination.
Three of the discs present music by Guillaume de Machaut exclusively. Machaut’s
presence looms large in histories of fourteenth-century music on account of the quantity and
quality of his output. Certainly, there is no comparable poet for whom musical expression
was so fundamental, and the delicacy of his verbal and musical language gives performers the
opportunity to articulate intricate combinations of words and music. The Orlando Consort’s
performances in both recordings – of selections from Le Voir Dit (Guillaume Machaut:
Songs from Le Voir Dit (Hyperion CDA67727, rec 2012, 64′)) and of monophonic and
polyphonic courtly love songs on Guillaume Machaut: Dart of Love (Hyperion CDA68008,
rec 2013, 65′) – are typically fine, stemming from the group’s long experience of performing
this repertory. Those who own their earlier recording of Machaut’s ‘Ne que on pourroit’ on
Food, wine & song: Music and feasting in renaissance Europe (Harmonia Mundi
HMU907314, rec 2001, 73′) will recognise their approach to texture across several tracks on
these discs, in which the appropriate vocalist sings the poetry against an untexted vocal
accompaniment. This affords maximum opportunity for the text to penetrate from the
polyphonic texture, from Matthew Venner’s countertenor in ‘Ne que on pourroit’ and ‘Plouré
dames’, to ‘Dame, se vous n’avez aperceü’ in which the text is presented by a tenor. On The
Dart of Love, the Orlandos demonstrate their command of a wide range of styles and genres,
including intricate motets and rondeaux, and expressive ballades and virelais. A chace
tentatively attributed to Denis le Grant (d. 1352) provides some highly entertaining and
virtuosic depictions of animals and hunting calls in a song in which the protagonist laments
his tendency to sing far less than before on account of his outdoor chivalric pursuits, an ironic
poetic gesture that is heard also in Machaut’s lengthy ballade Pour ce que tous. Both Orlando
Consort discs are based on scores prepared by Yolanda Plumley and others as part of The
Complete Works of Guillaume de Machaut, a project that will doubtless stimulate further
high-quality performances such as these.
Nevertheless, the Machaut disc that I found most striking in this selection was
Guillaume Machaut: Mon chant vous envoy: Virelais, ballades et rondeaux (Eloquentia
EL 1342, rec 2012, 61′), a recording that features voices and instruments, carefully matched in
various combinations. Although the CD as a whole is remarkable in its beauty and control,
there are standout tracks, notably ‘Dou mal qui m’a longuement’ in which Marc Mauillon’s
gentle vocal line is accompanied by delicately plucked strings, and the well-known rondeau
‘Dix et sept’ in which the playfulness of the text – which encodes the lady’s name in number
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– is effectively captured. Comparison can be made, for example, with The Orlando Consort
performance of ‘Dix et sept’ on Le Voir Dit, which is substantially slower, perhaps
emphasising the numerical element of the text over the poetic game. Codex Chantilly II
(Et’cetera KTC 1905, issued 2011, 77′) positively glistens in its exploration of music by
Machaut, Solage, Grimace and others. If at times the balance feels rather top-heavy, the
intricacies of individual lines are performed with control and sensitivity to rhythmic and
melodic details. The opening song, ‘Toute clarté’ describes the world turned upside-down,
and is a suitable opener for a collection that features some of the most contrapuntally
complex music of the period, written in a style known as the ars subtilior.
Travel and pilgrimage would have afforded opportunities for the interaction of very
different cultural and musical traditions. La Camera delle Lacrime present a highly dramatic
performance of Le livre vermeil de Montserrat (Paraty 414125, rec 2013, 61′) (a source
also known as the Llibre Vermell) benefitting from imaginative ‘staging and scenography’ by
Khaї-dong Luong; the recording was made in a concert setting, and benefits from the sense of
presence that occurs in live performance, even though some of the edges are somewhat
uneven. Particularly enjoyable is the involvement of the Dordogne Youth Choir, whose
voices ring with the enthusiasm of young musicians discovering the power of medieval song.
Their performance in the main sequence of songs captures both the reverence (‘Polorum
regina’) and joy (‘Stella splendens’) of medieval pilgrimage, and is an effective contrast to
the solo voices and instruments. Bruno Bonhoure’s dramatic vocal manner sometimes pushes
details of pulse and ensemble, though the instrumentalists and choir maintain control in what
was clearly an entertaining live show.
In Il Codice di S. Maria Maggiore, sec. XIV (Tactus TC 400005, rec 2013, 63′) the
Abruzzo region of Italy is revealed as a cultural meeting point. Located on the east side of
central modern Italy, it was ideally placed for its musicians to collect new ideas from those
passing though, and clearly developed its own repertoire. The ensemble, directed by Marco
Giacintucci, present the collection’s religious music both vocally an as the stimulus for
instrumental dances, such as the saltarelli based on 2- and 3-part settings of the Sanctus.
Although some of the accompanying notes are not quite clear on this point, it seems that the
recording has been made from live performance in an appropriately resonant architectural
setting, in a small number of takes. This may well account for the coherence of phrasing, and
the way in which the recording manages to capture something of the multisensory nature of
performance that would be experienced in concert, in which one would also be able to see the
band’s performance on replicas of instruments found in medieval iconography.
The musical practices of nuns are explored in Exit Rosa: Canti per le monache dal
manoscritto Q.11 di Bologna (Tactus TC 280002, issued 2011, 54′), a mixture of plainchant
and polyphony, some with instrumental accompaniment, and including spoken prayer taken
from annotations in the manuscript source. The codex, a miscellany that once belonged to
Sister Guiduça, was copied in Italy and dates to the decades around 1300. Its diverse contents
represent some of the interests that the nuns shared with the liturgical repertory circulating in
Europe at that time. Ensemble Korymbos sing this music with great lyricism, though at times
the pitch feels a touch high for comfort. Director Alessandra Fiori also includes items in the
Las Huelgas Codex, a comparable anthology used by nuns at the wealthy Cistercian convent
of Santa Maria la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, Northern Spain. For example, the group
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sing Claustrum pudicitie / Virgo viget / Flos filius eius, a song from that source also found as
Castrum pudicitie in the Bamberg Codex and – with French-texted upper parts – in the
Montpellier Codex. Such a well-travelled motet, full of intertextual references to French
secular song, reminds us of the cultural literacy of religious women, and Exit Rosa deserves
to sit alongside other excellent releases dedicated to nuns’ song collections, such as Ensemble
Organum’s recording of the Gradual of Eleanor of Brittany (Harmonia Mundi
HMU901403, recorded 1991, 61′), with which the present recording also shares some
repertoire.
Hör, Kristenhait! – Sacred Songs by the Last of the Minnesingers (Christophorus
CHR 77395, rec 2015, 79′) presents the music of Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376–1445) and
the musician known only as the Monk of Salzburg. The texture is enriched by bagpipes and
other instruments, and the performances benefit from the performer’s command of
improvisation, such as in a version of the Christmas hymn A solis ortus cardine, set to
German words Von anegeng der sunne kchlar by the Monk of Saltzburg. The title track,
presented here for lute and voice, stresses the importance of living a chaste life, something
that proved a personal challenge for Oswald; the poet-composer’s travels and involvement
with politics are well-documented, and his romantic liaisons arguably at odds with his final
burial place at Neustift monastery. This disc is a welcome adjustment to our understanding of
Oswald’s music in particular, since it presents sacred song rather than the courtly texts with
which we might more readily associate him.
The performance captured on Rosa e Orticha: Music of the Trecento (Carpe Diem
CD-16287, issued 2011, 60′) reflects a sensitive understanding of the way in which a
programme of short pieces might be presented in sequence, here tracing a day from dawn to
dusk. Opening with evocative woodwind sounds, expressive improvisation also underpins
Ensemble Syntagma’s approach in ways that convey the heart of each piece. The musicians
use their instruments to paint pictures of a world in which they imagine that ‘material reality
and the invisible freely flew together’. The results are exploratory, tasteful and evocative, and
beautifully highlight the sophisticated songs of Bartolino da Padova within music by his
contemporaries. The ensemble playing is tightly focused, blending Mami Irisawa, Catherine
Jousselin and Akira Tachikawa’s voices with the natural contours of the instrumental
melodies.
Websites
Carpe Diem www.carpediem-records.de
Christophorus www.christophorus-records.de
Eloquentia www.eloquentia.fr
Et’cetera www.etcetera-records.com
Hyperion www.hyperion-records.co.uk
Paraty new.paraty.fr
Tactus www.tactus.it
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