The recording features medieval instruments like cylindrical recorders, douçaines (after Mary Rose instruments), a fiddle by Karl Dennis, a five-course lute, and 26-string bray harps.
Compositional Technique
The Remede de Fortune integrates seven lyric poems set to music, showcasing a range of forms from older styles like the lai and complainte to newer formes fixes such as the ballade and virelai.
Composer's Artistic Vision
The Remede de Fortune, a dit of over 4000 lines, aims to instruct readers on how to live ethically and love well despite life's reversals, using examples and teachings.
Composer Biography
Guillaume de Machaut, the composer, served Jean of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, and later other eminent nobles, including future French kings and dukes, after Jean's death in battle.
Historical Context
Machaut lived through the Black Death (1348-50), which killed 30-60% of Europe's population, including about half of Paris's 100,000 inhabitants.
Composition History
Machaut's artistic creations are preserved in six 'complete works' manuscripts, some supervised by him, containing narrative poems, lyric poetry, and a significant body of music.
Interpretation
This recording's performance practice for Machaut's polyphonic songs follows the original manuscripts by assigning text only to one vocal line, with other parts performed by instruments or wordlessly vocalized.
You might also enjoy...
Music & Sweet Poetry Agree
L'Amour de moy
Percorsi della musica italiana
Cordat & Saboly: Noël Baroque en Pays d'Oc
Sammartini: Concertos
Adventures In Early Music
Bach: Magnificat in D Major & Unser Mund set voll Lachens
Lassus: Bonjour mon coeur
Bara Faustus' Dreame: Ayres, Ballads and Broken Consorts c. 1600 (Alpha Collection)
