medieval.org
New Albion 021
1987
medieval.org
New Albion 021
1987
1. Johannes SYMONIS. Puisque je suis fumeux [4:29]
ballade — mezzosoprano, vielle, corno muto
2. Jehan SUZAY. Pictagoras, Jabol et Orpheus [5:22]
ballade — countertenor, lute, vielle
3. Pierre des MOLINS. De ce que foul pense [2:34]
2 vielles, lute
4. Anon. A mon pouir [2:35]
lute, vielle
5. Anon. Medée fu en amer veritable [7:07]
ballade — mezzosoprano, lute, vielle
6. GOSCALCH. En nul estate [2:17]
lute, vielle
7. SOLAGE. Fumeux fume par fumée [4:38]
rondeau — countertenor, 2 vielles
8. Anon. Ha, fortune [1:45]
lute, vielle
9. Baude CORDIER. Tout par compas [3:58]
rondeau-canon — 2 vielles, tenor
10. GRIMACE. A l'arme, a l'arme [1:39]
virelai — 3 voices, vielle
11. Guillaume de MACHAUT. Quant Theseus ~ Ne quier veoir [6:12]
ballade — mezzosoprano, countertenor, 2 vielles
12. Baude CORDIER. Belle, bonne, sage [2:26]
lute, 2 vielles
13. Jean VAILLANT. Par maintes foys [2:55]
virelai — 3 voices
14. Pierre des MOLINS. De ce que foul pense [4:57]
ballade — mezzosoprano, lute, corno muto, vielle
15. Fransiscus ANDRIEU. Armes, Amours ~ O flour [6:32]
ballade — 3 voices, lute, vielle
PROJECT ARS NOVA
Michael Collver — countertenor, corno muto
Shira Kammen — vielle
Laurie Monahan — mezzosoprano
Crawford Young — lute
with guests:
Peter Becker, tenor
Randall Cook, vielle
Instruments:
lute: Joel van Lennep (Rindge, NH) 1982;
vielle: Fabrizio Reginato (Fonte Alto) 1984;
vielle: Richard Earle (Basel) 1982;
corno muto: Jacques LeGuy (Paris) 1975.
MODERN EDITION: French secular music, Manuscript Chantilly, Musée Condé 564.
Ed. Gordon K. Greene. Vols. 19-20. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, Monaco: 1981-1982.
COVER IMAGE: details from Très Riche Heures du Duc de Berry, Musée Condé, Chantilly.
Courtesy of the George Braziller Co. New York
Recorded at: Wellesley Chapel, Wellesley, MA July 20-22nd, 1987
Recording: WGBH89.7FM Boston
Producer: Joel Gordon
Engineer: James Donahue
Design: William Reuter Design
Executive Producer: Foster Reed
© %#p413; P 1989 New Albion Records, Inc. 584 Castro #515
San Francisco, California 94114
In
its broadest sense, "Ars Nova" (New Art) refers to the flowering of
polyphony that began in the early 14th Century, as innovations in
musical notation opened up an enormous new range of expressive
possibilities for musicians and composers. Ensemble P.A.N. specializes
in this rich and varied repertory of late medieval instrumental and
vocal music. While scholarship and training in historical performance
practice underlie the ensemble's efforts, the group's goals are more
than antiquarian. Offering a genre of chamber music that is largely
unfamiliar to modern audiences, P.A.N. seeks to present afresh the
finely crafted masterworks of an age whose passions and anxieties were
not unlike those of our own age. In this respect, Ensemble P.A.N. is
dedicated to the realization of a truly new art.
Ensemble P.A.N.
was founded in Basel, Switzerland in 1980. Lutenist Crawford Young
currently teaches at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, specializing in
medieval lute and the art of improvisation. Singer and cornettist
Michael Collver has worked extensively in early vocal techniques at the
Schola Cantorum and teaches at Longy School of Music in Boston. Singer
Laurie Monahan, who also concentrates on early vocal styles, taught at
the Schola Cantorum and is currently on the faculties of the Longy
School of Music and the New England Conservatory in Boston. A native of
Berkeley, California, Shira Kammen plays vielle and rebec and is well
known in the Bay Area for her performances and teaching of medieval
bowed instruments. Joining P.A.N. for this recording are New York-based
tenor Peter Becker, and Randall Cook on vielle, who also teaches in
Basel.
ARS MAGIS SUBTILITER
The second half of the
fourteenth century, despite wars, plagues, economic depression, and
religious strife, saw the flowering in the arts, in literature and in
philosophy, of a delight with subtlety of the most intricate kind, and a
refinement of sensibility that took special pleasure in all kinds of
complexities. This can be observed in the filigree decoration of the gothique flamboyant,
the detail in the borders of illuminated manuscripts, the arcane
network of internal puns, acrostics, and classical references in much of
the poetry, and the summae of the last of the scholastic philosophers.
The
same delight with subtlety and complexity can be heard in the music of
the period, when composers devised elaborate notation systems that let
them write music of extraordinary intricacy by the process of creating a
set of rhythmic layers, where each voice of a composition seemed to
move in a rhythmic world of its own, with syncopations, hesitations and
shifts of speed, regulated by numerical proportions that also controlled
the temporal coordination of the parts and their relationship to one
another. The cement binding the musical edifice together was the theory
of discant: a basic framework of note-against-note counterpoint
effectively regulated rhythmic displacements as they were heard by
performer and listener alike. Early in the century, this framework
admitted only perfect intervals, the octave, the fifth and the fourth,
at structural points, but towards the end of the century there was
increased use of imperfect consonances, thirds and sixths, that lent the
music a new warmth and sweetness. The two goals of sweetness and
subtlety were the seemingly paradoxical ends toward which the music of
the late fourteenth century strove.
In the middle decades of the
century Guillaume de Machaut had established, almost singlehandedly, new
genres of polyphonic song that blended a texture derived ultimately
from the motet with the poetic forms of the trouveres, the ballade, the virelai, and the rondeau. By the end of Machaut's life the texture of these songs had become more or less standardized as one principal voice, the cantus,
supported by two other parts, the tenor and contratenor. There was also
something almost like a class division between the different genres.
The ballade, which remained in some ways the closest to the
motet, had become increasingly the "serious" works, with the texts that
celebrated important occasions or personages, or served as an outlet for
moral or philosophical ideas. Virelais were often charming
character pieces using imitations of bird-songs and describing nature
scenes (often with a hidden moral dealing with courtly love), and rondeaux were the most obvious outlet for the poetry of courtly love pure and simple.
The
new songs were cultivated in most of the French courts and in those in
Aragon and northern Italy, that is, wherever there was an interest in
music and lyric poetry. But few seem to have cultivated them with the
same fervor of the schismatic papal court at Avignon—under the Genevan
pope Clement VII (1378-1394), and his Aragonese successor Benedict XIII
(1394-1409)— or the courts of Foix, Gaston Phébus (1343-1391) and his
son Mathieu (1391-1398), as well as that of the kings of Aragon.
The music of these courts is reflected in a remarkable source, Chantilly, Musée Condé MS 564 (olim
1047), a manuscript copied most likely in Avignon or Foix sometime
before 1400. It belonged in the fifteenth century to a Florentine
family, and remained in Florence until the nineteenth century when it
was acquired by the Duke of Aumale, who presented it to the Musée Condé.
In its present state the manuscript contains 99 songs and 13 motets.
The original first twelve leaves were removed early on, perhaps because
they contained pieces that presented political views no longer accepted
after 1395. In two leaves added at the beginning, someone, perhaps the
composer, added Baude Cordier's famous heart-shaped piece, Belle, bonne, sage and his circle-shaped canon Tour par compas. Datable works in the manuscript give the repertory a span from ca. 1370 to 1395.
All
the songs in this record come from the Chantilly codex and present as
clear a picture as can be presented within one recording of the song
repertory of the late fourteenth century. The ars subtilior, as
Ursula Gunther aptly has called it, is not just music of great
complexity, some of which can be understood only by the performers
themselves or by those who take the time to ponder the sometimes arcane
texts and complex notation. It is also music of charm and delicacy that
has its own immediate appeal. Like the elaborate work of contemporary
goldsmiths, each of these songs charms and dazzles at first sight and
also repays careful listening and study of detail.
Johannes Symonis, called Hasprois (fl. 1378-1428), Puisque je suis fumeux (ballade).
Hasprois, a clerk from Arras, served successively the king of Portugal,
Charles V of France, antipopes Clement VII and Benedict XIII, and pope
Martin V. He died in Rome as a notary of the curia. This ballade belongs
within a group of pieces produced in the late fourteenth century by a
"society of smokers". These works have whimsical texts that make little
apparent sense — though they may have hidden meanings. It is not
impossible that the "fumeurs" did use opium or hashish, which was then
available, to fire their vagaries.
Jehan Suzay (Suzoy) (fl. 1380). Pictagoras, jabol et Orpheus (ballade).
Suzay may have been connected with the Avignon chapel, since a Gloria
by him survives in the Apt manuscript. He belongs to the generation
immediately after Machaut, but this ballade has all the traits of having been written in the 1380's, on account of its fierce rhythmic complexities.
Pierre de Molins (fl. 1390), De ce que foul pense (ballade).
Nothing certain is known of Pierre's life. The style of this piece
suggests a date close to 1400. It was a popular work, transmitted in
many sources, including an instrumental version in the Faenza codex. Its
opening was woven into a well-known tapestry in the 1420's.
Anonymous, A mon pouir (virelai).
This piece is unique to the Chantilly manuscript. It is done here
instrumentally, something that we know was done to this repertory from
the existence of sources such as the Faenza manuscript. The style of the
piece suggests a date in the 1390's.
Anonymous, Medee fu en amer veritable (ballade).
Though anonymous, this was a popular work, known in Florence and in the
Veneto, which merited being copied in the 1430's in the famous Oxford
Manuscript, Canonici misc. 213, along with music of a later generation.
The text is an elegant love-poem that looks back to the style of
Machaut, but the music is very much a product of the 1380's.
Goscalch [Petrus de Godescalc? (fl. 1378-1394)], En nul estat (ballade).
The identification of the composer of this fiercely complex work with
Petrus, who was connected with the papal chapel under Clement VII and
Benedict XIII, is not absolutely certain, but it is certainly plausible.
This work, setting a philosophical text dealing with deceit, treachery,
and the shortness of life, is his only known work. Here it is performed
instrumentally.
Solage (fl. 1380), Fumeux Fume par fumee (rondeau). Several of Solage's works suggest that he was in the service of the Duke of Berry in the 1380's. Fumeux Fume is another of the whimsical works for the society of fumeurs.
Anonymous, Ha, fortune (ballade).
This piece survives only in Chantilly. Despite some rhythmic
complexities, its general style suggests a date before the height of the
ars subtilior in the 1380's.
Baude Cordier (fl. 1384-1398), Tout par compas (canonic rondeau).
Cordier was most likely the nickname of Baude Fresnel, harp player of
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. It is possibly Baude himself who
added his two works at the beginning of the Chantilly manuscript. Tout par compas
is the famous canon in the shape of a circle that has been widely
reproduced in facsimile. Both the text and the length of the work
(thirty three tempora for one turn of the wheel) are symbolic of
perfection, as is the starting mensuration of the canonic voices.
Grimace (fl. 1350-1375), A l'arme, a l'arme (virelai). Nothing is known of Grimace's life but from his music it appears that he was a contemporary of Machaut.
Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300- 1377), Quant Theseus (ballade double).
Machaut's magnificent four-voice ballade with two texts is one of his
best works. The texts are an elegant love-song in the most elaborate
rhetoric, full of classical and mythological allusions.
Baude Cordier (fl. 1384-1398), Belle, bonne, sage (rondeau).
Like the circle canon, this piece, written in the shape of a heart, was
entered into the manuscript probably by Cordier himself.
Jean Vaillant (fl. 1360-1390), Par maintes foys (virelai).
Vaillant, who may have been a musician of the Duke of Berry, was
apparently the head of a music school in Paris and was probably a
younger contemporary of Machaut. Par maintes foys is the archetypal
bird-song virelai. The subject is the traditional conflict between the
nightingale (the symbol of love) and the cuckoo (the symbol of
faithlessness).
F. Andrieu [Magister Franciscus? (fl. 1350-1377)], Armes, amours (ballade double).
His ballade sets Eustace Deschamps' lament on the death of Guillaume de
Machaut, which suggests that Andriu was a pupil or a younger colleague
of Machaut.
—Alejandro Enrique Planchart
