Release Date: 01 January 2000
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 730099483322
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: MACHAUT
Description
Guillaume de Machaut(c. 1300 - 1377)La Messe de NostreDame Ballades, Rondeauxand Lai from Le Voir Dit Guillaume de Machautwas the last great poet who was also a composer. As late as the fifteenth century, high style poetryand music were intimately linked in sentiment and use, which makes itsurprising that Machaut was the last person to practise both at the highestlevel. Yet in each field he was immensely influential. His poetry was admiredand imitated by French poets and by Chaucer, his music by composers throughout Europe well into the fifteenth century. This disc presents aselection of related works composed by Machaut in the 13605. We can think ofthis as Machaut's 'late period' not just because he was, by medieval standards,well into his old age, but also because the music and the poetry have thatserenity and other-worldly perfection that we find in late Beethoven orStravinsky. Although on the face of it the Mass and these songs are verydifferent -the Mass, his most famous work, is rooted in the liturgy of thechurch and dedicated to the Virgin; the late songs, still very little known,are messages of courtly love -in their musical substance they have much incommon. It seems likely that they were written during the same few years (c.l360-65) and that Machaut worked out in their very different forms musical ideasthat filled his imagination at that time. Ia Messe de NostreDame isone of the earliest, perhaps the earliest setting of the ordinary of the Massas a whole. Machaut probably composed it for performance at the Saturday LadyMass celebrated in Reims cathedral at a small altar near the choir screen. His intentionseems to have been that it would function as a Mass in honour of the Virginduring the remainder of his life, but that after his death it would become amemorial Mass for himself and his brother Jean, like Guillaume a canon of thecathedral. In due course the brothers were buried together near the altar, andthe Mass presumably continued to be sung over them for many years, perhaps evenas late as the early fifteenth century. For this performancewe went back to Reims cathedral in order, as far as possible, to record the Mass in itsoriginal acoustics. The altar to the Virgin was set against the screen, on theright of the entrance to the choir, so that the singers would have had behindthem a wall of wood or perhaps stone, reflecting their sound back into thenave. Both screen and altar were removed after the Revolution, so for thisperformance the singers were placed in front of the organ immediately east ofthe choir step, which gave them a similar sounding-board while retaining the) argeracoustics of that part of the building. The performance was recorded using Sensauraand matches with striking fidelity the sound of the performance in thebuilding. The recording was made over two nights in sub-zero temperatures, bothfactors that may have affected the acoustics, but what we hear in thisrecording is as close as we can get, at pr
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Zenz:Cathariou:Iacovidou
Zahir Ensemble
Yun-Yi Qin
