The Orlando Consort & Machaut, concluded

NOTE: All of the music on this program is features the Orlando Consort and our guest Angus Smith. The recordings are on the Hyperion label. For more information on this ensemble::

http://www.orlandoconsort.com/

I. Songs from Remede de Fortune. Hyperion CDA66399.

This album is the ninth of a projected eleven instalments recording the complete musical works of Guillaume de Machaut (c1300-1377), France’s pre-eminent poet-composer of the fourteenth century, extolled upon his death by his younger contemporary Eustache Deschamps as ‘le nouble rhetorique’ (‘the noble rhetorician’) and ‘flour de flours de toute melodie’ (‘flower of the flowers of every melody’). Machaut’s professional activities were divided between an ecclesiastical career, culminating in his appointment as canon at the cathedral in Reims, where he was in residence by 1340, and service throughout his life to members of three generations of the French nobility. These patrons—including John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia; his daughter Bonne of Luxembourg and her husband, the future John II of France; and their children, Charles V of France and John, Duke of Berry—provided the audience for Machaut’s significant corpus of lyric poems with and without musical settings, and were the dedicatees of and sometimes protagonists in his long narrative poems (dits amoureux). Machaut’s noble patrons also commissioned and collected sumptuous manuscripts in which the composer’s works were gathered, ensuring their preservation to this day.

The songs recorded here are found among Machaut’s collected works not as standalone pieces, but embedded into a narrative in which their composition and performance play a dramatic role. The Remede de Fortune is a dit amoureux, a genre of narrative poetry whose history extends back to the thirteenth century. Machaut composed over a dozen of these works throughout his life; their contents, often representing fictional alter egos of himself and his patrons, were depictions in microcosm of the courtly life of late medieval France. The judgement of the King of Bohemia, for example, featured Machaut’s real-life patron John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia; its companion The judgement of the King of Navarre, as well as Comfort for a friend, paid homage to Charles II, King of Navarre, while John, Duke of Berry was fictionalized in The fountain of love.

The Remede de Fortune is one of two of Machaut’s dits amoureux to feature interpolated musical compositions (songs from the other one, Le Voir Dit, were recorded by The Orlando Consort on Hyperion CDA67727). Written in the poetic form of octosyllabic rhyming couplets, characteristic of the genre, the 4,200-line Remede tells the story of a young man’s love for a noble lady, leading to an emotional crisis whose resolution provokes his maturation. The simple story, however, is a frame providing Machaut the opportunity to explore deeper issues of philosophy, psychology and artistic achievement. It is at once a coming-of-age story charting the emotional life of a young man; a manual for proper courtly behaviour toward ladies; an encyclopaedia of lyric and musical forms of the mid-fourteenth century; and a granular description of courtly life. (While the identity of the lady is not made explicit, scholars believe that she can be identified as Bonne of Luxembourg, whom Machaut described as his patron later in life.) The Remede de Fortune in its original manuscript context is also an extraordinary work of multimedia artistry, combining text, music and illuminations by one of the most important workshops of fourteenth-century Paris.

The central question of the work is both timeless and cross-cultural: how to protect oneself against the vagaries of Fortune. Machaut’s presentation of the issue in the Remede constitutes a re-staging of the famous work of Boethius, The consolation of philosophy, written more than 800 years earlier, when the author was in prison awaiting a wrongful execution on charges invented by his political enemies. In The consolation of philosophy a despairing Boethius is visited by the personified Lady Philosophy, who instructs him how to regain his emotional and intellectual composure. Machaut’s protagonist Lover, in despair over a setback in his love affair, is visited and counselled by the personified Hope. Both Philosophy and Hope use the Socratic method of questioning to prod the narrators into the realization that Fortune only controls transient and material things external to themselves, while they themselves always remain in possession of their minds and are therefore impervious to reversals of Fortune.

Music plays a crucial role in the Remede’s narrative: songs both drive and accompany the action, and the work constitutes a major statement about music’s power to move the emotions. The seven interpolated songs present an encyclopaedic survey of seven different lyrico-musical genres, beginning with those of the thirteenth-century ars antiqua—the lay (tracks 1-3), complainte (tracks 4-6) and chanson roial (track 7)—and then moving to the shorter lyric genres of the fourteenth century, set in the rhythmically more subtle ars nova style: the baladelle (track 8) and ballade (track 9/12), the virelai (track 10) and the rondeau (track 11). The progression through the songs from older to newer genres also tracks the changing balance between poetry and music that occurred between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The songs presented in the first two works have long and involved texts set to a monophonic melody, while the poems of the ars nova get shorter and shorter as the music becomes more elaborate.

The Remede’s narrative impetus is provided early on by the lay, a song that the Lover composes to express his love for the lady. The lay was the longest and most complicated poetic genre of Machaut’s time, containing twelve stanzas, each of which has its own rhyme and metrical scheme. Machaut’s lays are also often musically virtuosic, containing an enormous vocal range and highly differentiated melodic gestures, and this one is no exception. The recording on this album is in fact split among three singers of different voice types to accommodate the enormous range of the song.

Although the Lover has no intention of showing the lay to the lady, he happens to be in her presence when she is given a copy (without attribution) and she asks the Lover to recite it for her. Once he has done so, she asks him who wrote it. He is afraid to admit that he is the author and is so tongue-tied by this question that he falls into a kind of trance and walks off without responding, a major courtly faux pas. He walks until he finds himself in the Garden of Hesdin—a real-life garden in Artois, famous for its elaborate automata and well known to Machaut’s noble audience—and then, overcome with despair, he composes a ‘complainte’ about Fortune. While the lay was maximally contrasting in poetic and musical invention, written by a poet at the height of his powers, the complainte is static, containing thirty-six stanzas of the same musical setting and metrical structure, though with different rhymes in each stanza. Thus the two long monophonic songs at the beginning of the work represent the wild swings of emotion of the young, inexperienced lover, from giddy emotional excess to the numbness of despair. (A full performance of all thirty-six verses of the complainte would take over an hour to perform; for this recording we have chosen fifteen of the verses.)

The complainte’s end seems to stage the Lover’s death; in its last lines he ‘render[s] up my soul, / My hands joined, my head bowed’. Indeed, after finishing the complainte, the Lover reports that he is lying motionless, and that all his senses have left him, as someone who sees death before him. At this point he is suddenly aware of a beautiful lady who has appeared by his side. She is the personified Hope who has come to counsel him out of his despair and to teach him the ‘remedy’ to protect himself against Fortune. The essence of Hope’s message is contained in the two songs that she sings to the Lover—songs that form the turning point of the narrative, project its philosophical message, and exemplify the historical progression of musical style. The jaunty, upward-scampering melody of Joye, plaisance (track 7) conveys Hope’s central message: that true love engenders only positive emotions, so that the true lover is always happy and self-sufficient. A lover who claims to be suffering is not experiencing true love, but rather Desire.

Hope’s second song, En amer a douce vie (track 8), marks a turning point in the musical style represented in the Remede, where we finally hear a polyphonic song organized and controlled by the new rhythmic potential of ars novanotation. This is clearly a moment that requires suspension of disbelief in the narrative, since we must imagine that Hope is performing a song that in fact requires four singers! Machaut seems to acknowledge the novelty of the song in the text of the Remede, for after it is over, the Lover narrates that ‘I had never heard a harmony with such sweetness’. The sweet harmony, together with the pleasing words, brings the Lover so much joy that he tells us that he makes sure to memorize words and music on the spot, a task that requires enormous effort: ‘All the faculties of the five senses that God gave me were so directed toward this end that I had no intention or thought of concentrating on anything else.’

Hope’s songs have thus effected the full return of the Lover’s senses that had been stripped away by the end of his own complainte, once again showing the power of song to effect well-being. The Lover notices for the first time that the garden is full of singing birds, and their song completes his recovery, leading him to compose a ballade, Dame, de qui(tracks 9 & 12). The ballade’s form is similar to that of the preceding baladelle: both are three-stanza poems with a refrain in the last line, set to bipartite music, but the baladelle repeats both musical sections (aabb), while the ballade repeats only the first (aab). The formal similarity suggests that the Lover is modelling himself upon Hope, and the ballade’s textual content also shows how thoroughly the Lover has internalized Hope’s teaching: he expresses his current state of joy that derives from contemplating the lady and the hope he has of seeing her. In addition, the Lover is now employing polyphony, also seemingly following Hope’s model; the change from monophony to polyphony can thus be read as a kind of musical metaphor for the enchanted state of mind he enters when he is thinking like a true lover. In the Remede’s earliest manuscript version the ballade is copied in two-voice polyphony: a cantus voice that sings the text, and a tenor, as recorded on track 9. In later versions the number of polyphonic voices increases to four, as heard on track 12, significantly enriching the contrapuntal texture with the addition of triplum and contratenor (respectively above the existing cantus and tenor) parts.

Following the composition of the ballade, the Lover returns to the court, and as he arrives he comes upon a large company of people, including his lady, dancing in a meadow. He notes that there were no instruments or minstrels, ‘but diverting, courtly and lively little songs’ sung by the participants. The lady invites him to dance, and soon after to sing, and he complies by singing the monophonic virelai Dame, a vous (track 10), whose dance-like quality is heard in its rhythmic verve and use of hemiola, and whose third stanza seems to refer directly to the Lover’s inability to tell his lady of his feelings earlier in the story. Immediately after he finishes, we are told, a young lady begins another song and the dancing continues unabated; here we get a picture of what these social dances might have been like: one song folding into another, until finally it is time to return to the castle, hear Mass and have dinner.

As they walk back to the castle, the lady asks the Lover why he disappeared so suddenly earlier, and, bolstered by Hope’s teaching, the Lover explains the whole story, recapitulating for her the events of the narrative thus far. As proof of his feelings of love, he tells her, if she ‘looks over that last little song I sang [track 10], whose words and music I composed, you could readily discover whether I lie or speak the truth’. The song thus authenticates the Lover’s emotions, and the lady accepts his love. The after-dinner entertainment includes an elaborate list of nearly two dozen instruments of all sizes and sounds, which nevertheless performed ‘without discord’, and then performances by singers so skilled in both ‘old and new styles’ of music that they were superior to Orpheus.

At the end of the festivities, the guests take their leave, and the Lover lingers so that he can speak privately with his lady. In this meeting they exchange rings, with Hope officiating in a kind of quasi-formal acknowledgement of their status as lovers, and as the Lover departs he composes a rondeau (track 11) to express his feelings. The rondeau is the shortest of all the lyric forms practised by Machaut, and its two-line refrain, ‘My lady, my heart remains with you, / Though I am leaving you behind’, encapsulates the Lover’s feelings of the moment, conveying the impression that the rondeau was composed on the spot. This song is extremely melismatic, the words nearly getting lost in a sea of polyphonic voices. Is it fanciful to hear in the cascading notes something like the abundant happiness that the Lover is feeling in that moment?

Anne Stone © 2023

II. The Fount of Grace. Hyperion CDA68417.

Guillaume de Machaut (c1300-1377), France’s most famous poet-composer of the fourteenth century, was probably the last to set exclusively his own texts to music in the tradition of the trouvères before him. On the other hand, he was one of the first to compose his love songs in polyphony. Machaut’s complete works are exceptionally well preserved in beautifully illuminated manuscripts, originally destined for wealthy noble patrons. For the public at large, Machaut is nowadays best known as the composer of the first polyphonic Mass, his marvellous Messe de Notre Dame. However, far from being a composer of predominantly religious works (the Mass remained his only liturgical composition), Machaut instead devoted most of his artistic efforts to the praise of courtly love, in allegorical dits (or stories, two of them being pseudo-autobiographical) and in lyrics with and without music—those set to music including lays, motets and chansons, both monophonic and polyphonic—virtually all of which deal with the joys and problems of love. Yet, within this idealized courtly world, there are also some peepholes, especially in his literary works, which give us a glimpse of the harsh reality of the times in which he lived. A handful of Machaut’s musical works, recorded here, even reveal in detail some of the disasters that befell France during his lifetime.

Few of Machaut’s songs have an explicitly religious character. In two lays he professed his devout love for the Virgin Mary. One of these, the Lay de la fonteinne (track 7) which forms the backbone of the present recording, starts with a surprising transition from courtly to spiritual love. Rejected by his beloved, the lover decides to appeal to the Virgin for her grace, which he is certain to receive because, unlike earthly ladies, she never withholds her love. In the first part of the lay he praises Mary’s superb qualities and explains how, at the Holy Ghost’s command, she became daughter of God the Father and mother to Jesus the Son. This praise is followed by a lengthy and quite unorthodox exposition of the mystery of the Trinity, which is compared to the different shapes of water flowing from a fountain; whoever washes himself in that water will be saved. Recalling his sinful life, the poet implores the Virgin to intercede with her Son that his transgressions may not cause him to be thrown into Satan’s cauldron.

In Machaut’s oeuvre the lay (or lai—both spellings occur) has twelve double stanzas. Each of the twelve has its own distinctive rhyme scheme, which makes this form extremely demanding; only the final pair of stanzas returns to the initial rhyme scheme. (Indeed, Machaut’s pupil Eustache Deschamps called the lay the most arduous of all poetic forms.) Moreover, the music for each stanza pair utilizes a different melody, again except for stanza 12, which has the same melody as the first, but transposed up a fifth (or sometimes down a fourth). An additional complication of the Lay de la fonteinne is that while the odd-numbered stanzas are monophonic, as is customary in lays, the even-numbered ones call for three voices. The notation remains monophonic throughout, but the word ‘chace’ indicates that these verses are to be sung as a three-part canon at the unison. Thus the musical structure symbolizes the idea of three in one—the Trinity.

In the first stanza the lover’s entreaty for grace from his lady is rendered by an expressive melody with descending gestures in narrow intervals, sung in the molle (soft) hexachord which includes the note B flat. (A hexachord is a scale of six notes which are used to intone the proper pitches.) At the moment in the text where the lady remains unyielding—‘Sans amollier’ (‘Beyond being mollified’)—the melody changes to the durum (hard) hexachord with the note B natural (or B durum) and now has a predominantly upward direction. The musical illustration applies as well to the new text in the repeat of the melody, where the poet turns to the Virgin: her love is ‘Sans amenuisier’ (‘Without growing weak’). Each stanza takes over some melodic and/or rhythmic motifs from the preceding one. Gradually, the three-voice stanzas become more complex, and are interspersed with rests which in the canonic structure become parts of hockets (quick exchanges of notes and rests between the voices). Only towards the end, in stanza 11, does simplicity return. In the twelfth and final stanza, the rhymes and melody of stanza 1 return, but now as a canon which transforms the original expressive melody of the beginning into a tense counterpoint of contrasting phrases. This setting betrays the passion with which the poet implores the Virgin to pray that her Son’s anger may not strike the humble sinner when the final day of judgement comes.

Occasionally, Machaut steps forward as an engaged observer of the turmoil of his times. At various places in his work he refers to the devastation of the country by pestilence, war and strife. The years around 1358-60 are among the most calamitous in France’s history. The Hundred Years’ War had already broken out two decades earlier, but after a number of humiliating French defeats (Crécy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356), things looked darker than ever. Machaut’s hometown Reims was beleaguered—without success—for forty days in 1359/60 by the English Black Prince, son of King Edward III who at the time held claim to the French throne; Reims Cathedral was the place where French kings were traditionally crowned. Even the aged Machaut had to keep watch on the walls of the city, as he reveals in a melancholic complaint (not set to music).

Three of Machaut’s motets—his latest works in this genre—deal with these disasters and plead for divine help. All three end with a prayer for peace. The grandeur of these works’ four vocal parts makes them very different from his earlier elegant love motets; the sonority of these motets is closer to Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame. The lower pair of voices (tenor and contratenor) moves in expansive slow notes, while the texted upper voices (motetus and triplum) move more quickly and with complex rhythmic figuration interspersed with hockets. All three motets are preceded by an introit starting with the two upper voices, one of which opens the piece and is joined by the other at the halfway point, while the lower voices enter towards the end, announcing the main body of the motet.

Christe qui lux / Veni creator spiritus / Tribulatio proxima est (Motet 21, track 8) appeals to Christ and the Holy Ghost for help against the devastations wreaked upon the land by the English, who are not named explicitly but are called ‘a wretched people’. This work is the most impressive and grandest of the three motets, and can probably be connected to the siege of Reims. The two upper voices begin by citing the text of a well-known hymn. The psalm text of the tenor (Psalm 21: 12), taken from the responsory ‘Circumdederunt me viri mendaces’, is also cited in the texts of the upper voices, as are several prophetic texts, namely those from the book of Habakkuk. The despairing tone of this work and the comparison with the miseries of the people of Israel in the Old Testament betray the utter hopelessness of the French people. The triplum opens the motet and is soon joined by the motetus, while at the end of the introit the two lower voices deploy a powerful supporting role. In the main body of the work, the tenor and contratenor move in repeating rhythmic patterns—the taleae (a structure found in most motets). Here they sound four times and are then repeated in notes which are twice as short, effectuating a speeding-up that expresses the urgency of the cry for divine help. The fleet-footed upper voices also have repeating rhythms but in a filigree of shorter notes. The coordinated rhythmic structure outlines the strophic design of this monumental prayer.

Tu qui gregem / Plange regni / Apprehende arma (Motet 22, track 2) is a clearly political work. Like Motet 21, it is built on a fragment from a responsory with a psalm text (Psalm 34: 2)—an exhortation to take up arms. Here it is the motetus that starts the brief introit, calling on the realm to weep. In around 1358 France was in a desperate state: King John the Good remained as a prisoner in England after the defeat at Poitiers, and several factions struggled for power. Dissent among the nobles who ruled the country and tried to profit from the weakness of the government made France easy prey for the enemy. A textual ostinato in the triplum on the words ‘dux’ and forms of the verb ‘ducere’ emphasizes the urgent need for leadership: a ‘dux’ is called upon to take up the role of leader and to lead (‘ducere’) his people out of their miseries. The figure being gestured to here is probably the young and inexperienced Dauphin Charles, Duke (‘dux’) of Normandy, who governed the country in his father’s absence. The motet’s dazzling rhythms and, towards the end, the leaps into the highest register further the desperation of the French people.

In Felix virgo / Inviolata genitrix / Ad te suspiramus (Motet 23, track 4), the Holy Virgin is beseeched for mediation with her Son, for help against ‘a people of great wealth’ (the English) by whom the suffering people are dragged into an abyss of miseries. She, the Virgin whose worth can be described solely in superlatives, is the only one who can cause her Son to take action. The tenor is a fragment from the Salve regina, one of the four Marian antiphons which in an annual round conclude each liturgical day. The lengthy introit opens with the triplum, which is soon joined by the motetus. Together they form a tense counterpoint that conveys the bitter pain of the supplicants; eventually they are bolstered by the awe-inspiring sound of the two lower voices. The main body of the motet sounds less stern than in the other two motets but is no less intense. As in Motet 21, the taleae—here there are three—are repeated in half-length values, increasing the pace and tension of the piece. Some of the triplum’s text recalls that of Motet 22 (‘For like the blind we walk / And are following no guide’; ‘… led to the right path’). Machaut’s passionate appeal to the Virgin forms a grand conclusion to his motet corpus. In their musical settings the three late motets are a wonderful illustration of the composer’s superb handling of four-part counterpoint.

The majority of Machaut’s songs are devoted to the praise of courtly love, and many are in ballade form. A ballade has two sections, the first of which is open-ended; the melody is then repeated with a more clear-cut cadence. The second section is not repeated but is followed by a refrain that returns in all three of the ballade’s stanzas.

The three-voice ballade Donnez, signeurs (track 1) is not a love song but an appeal to the noble class. As a former almoner in the service of John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, Machaut had himself received several substantial gifts from great lords: he knew the good impression to be made through generosity. In this song he calls for (unnamed) lords to be generous: better to give out your riches with a sweeping gesture than to be robbed of them. The song’s melody develops in broad melismatic figures on the most important words, in alternation with swift declamation of the remaining text. Tres douce dame (track 6) is a tender ballade for two vocal parts in which the lover promises eternal faith to his lady. Its melody is characterized by frequent descending figures, with syncopated rhythms darting over a slow-moving tenor. This ballade has an energetic pace, and in modern terms is in 2/4 time.

Tant doucement me sens emprisonnez (Rondeau 9, track 3/10) plays, as do many rondeaux, with the ambiguity of two similar-sounding words—here ‘emprisonnez’ and ‘en [ceste] prison nez’. Being in prison or imprisoned is a metaphor for being captivated by love for a lady. Typical for the text-setting in rondeaux is that these ambiguous rhyming words receive an extended melisma. A rondeau has two musical sections that are slightly irregularly repeated—in scheme: AB aA ab AB (capitals indicating textual and melodic repeats, lowercase letters denoting new text on the repeated melody). Originally this rondeau was a two-part song (cantus and tenor), but in a late manuscript two voices were added—one in the upper register (the triplum) and the other as a companion to the tenor (the contratenor)—resulting in a rich four-part texture.

Virelais are mostly homophonic and rhythmically lively and simple, as is the case in the two such works recorded here. Machaut by preference called the form ‘chanson baladee’ (‘dancing song’). A virelai consists of three stanzas, each of which is bookended by a refrain; in turn, each refrain–stanza–refrain block follows the scheme AbbaA (‘A’ being the refrain, ‘a’ the same melody with different text, ‘b’ different melody and text). It may often have been sung by a group and a soloist, with the latter taking the verses and all singers joining in for the refrains. In Hé, dame de valour (track 5) the protagonist praises the lady and sanguinely petitions for her grace. The dance character of virelais is often enhanced by the use of iambic rhythms (short–long), as can be heard in this song. In some virelais Machaut used a two- or three-part texture but still kept rhythm and melody simpler and more lilting than in his ballades and rondeaux. En mon cuer a un descort (track 9) describes a typical dilemma in the lover’s heart, a conflict between Desire for and Fear of the lady. Iambic rhythms are now also in the tenor voice but in longer notes, while the iambs of the upper voice can at the same time be heard as syncopated rhythms in 3/4 time.

This album thus offers an almost complete survey of the various aspects of Machaut’s art: his idiosyncratic explanation in music of an article of faith and his trust in the Virgin’s clemency, his intense prayers for peace in impressive motets, and his praise of courtly love in pleasant and imaginative songs.

Jacques Boogaart © 2023

III. A Lover’s Death Hyperion CDA68430.

From MusicWeb International: The so-called Court of Love instituted by the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine around 1170 was a centre for chivalry, intellect and culture. This wealthy and influential patron of the arts enriched not only the lives of poets and troubadours in Poitiers, but as Queen and Regent of both France and England at different times, was a hugely important and fascinating historical figure, too. The art of Courtly Love which developed in the 13^th Century, spread out from Occitania through Europe fostering a tradition of trouvères in Northern France and Minnesänger in German territories and reached its zenith with the refined blend of poetry and music penned by Guillaume de Machaut in the mid-14^thcentury.

This cult of ideal love and a view of life that the French would call the douceur de vivre coincided with the establishment of centres of learning; universities were founded and flourished at Bologna, Paris and Oxford. In addition to educating young minds in medicine, law, philosophy and music, they began to emerge as centres of intellectual power, too.

Machaut may have been influenced by such illustrious wordsmiths as Dante (1265-1321) and Petrarch (an almost exact contemporary with dates: 1304-1374) both masters of medieval love poetry. I have not seen any academic vindication of this but I also have a hunch Machaut got a lot from the writings too of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) known mostly for his works of theology and philosophy but whose prayers move with a rhythm and flow that I also feel when I read Machaut. 

The Orlando Consort’s final CD in their Machaut edition and indeed their final record (they disbanded in Summer 2023) is based largely of Motets, Ballades, Rondeaux and Virelais on texts of love, on noble ladies, their sweet and capricious natures, their graceful pleasing glances and their disposition to wickedness.

There is good variety of form in the program if not so much in subject content. The four motets are all fairly early works in Machaut’s corpus. We get six Ballades, three are early 2vv examples while three are later 3vv compositions. Finally, we are treated to three Rondeaux and four Virelais, one of which is in two parts. Some of this music has been recorded before and I will make some comparisons later in the review as I did in my previous two Machaut postings; some pieces are rarities on disc and thus important to the discographic record.

The Orlando Consort formed in 1988 has been making records since 1990. I counted at least five on the Metronome label (I have the Dunstable record they did with them), five on Archiv (DG) all main-stream releases which did well at the time (1996-99), at least eight with Harmonia Mundi from 1999 to about 2007 and then a final flowering relationship with Hyperion which began with the first Machaut CD in 2012 and ends with this disc.

During this time the quartet of countertenor, two tenors and baritone changed a little but their style was consistent and their quality maintained. Countertenor Robert Harre-Jones was taking the high lines up to the end of the Harmonia Mundi era, he was followed by Matthew Venner. Tenor Charles Daniels, perhaps a name known to more readers was a member until 2003 and was then succeeded by Mark Dobell. Founding members Angus Smith and Donald Greig were ever present.

In this last CD of the series we can actually make a comparison in Je ne cuit pas B14 between The Orlando Consort of 2023 and the same group in 1997 recorded by Archiv in their first Machaut recording, the charming and very recommendable Dreams in the Pleasure Garden. Here the singers recorded four Rondeaux, seven Ballades and three Virelais in a warmly resonant church called St. Osdag, a little North of Hanover in a village called Mandelsloh. The disc is excellent, the programming is intelligent and at 78 minutes it is good value. I don’t know how easy it is to obtain a physical CD copy but it will be available on the normal streaming platforms and as a download, I am sure. B14 is actually quite unusual as it is written from the perspective of the female. It is a joyful and carefree exaltation of thanks for a love gratefully received, a love which nourishes and brings naught but happiness and merriment. On Hyperion, Matthew Venner is serene and pure of tone and has the text in the cantus. Mark Dobell is taking the tenor part of the work and vocalises. Nearly 26 years earlier Robert Harre-Jones duets with Charles Daniels. The acoustical differences are marked, interpretively they contrast less although the older performance seems to have a little more subtlety. Both are excellent versions of the Ballade which, considering its bare two-part texture, is an amazingly satisfying construction.

A famous box-set in the LP era was The Art of Courtly Love on EMI featuring The Early Music Consort of London under David Munrow. The first disc in the three-record set was devoted to Machaut and his Age and featured three items on the current CD. In M10 which is a 3vv Motet countertenors Charles Brett and James Bowman take the texted triplum and motetus parts whilst Alan Lumsden plays the slower repeated patterns of the tenor line on a trumpet. Next in B19 a 3vv Ballade from a timid lover who is quite overcome in his longings, we have tenor Martyn Hill with the text whilst the other two parts are given to fiddle and bass rebec (a kind of early cello). Finally this influential record had on it the famous Douce dame jolie V4 which Martyn Hill sang accompanied by chorus and the whole drums and whistles of the consort! It is quite a different way of performing Machaut to that adopted and developed by The Orlando Consort but it works. The music is robust enough to take it. 

This CD actually starts with the Motet M10 which in its text refers to the lover’s burning heart that will set him ablaze and surely be the end of him. In this setting and in B19 The Orlando Consort’s characteristic elegance and gentleness are again spotlighted. I am very fond of the Ballade in particular. This account of it is nuanced but does not displace an earlier one which I will get to very soon. A relative disappointment in the current program is that oft-recorded Virelai Douce dame jolie. Perhaps I shouldn’t have dug out the vigorous Munrow, as after that Donald Greig’s solo version seems a little dull.

In my previous reviews of the last two Machaut Edition records I paid tribute to the epoch-making Gothic Voices disc of forty years ago, namely The Mirror of Narcissus. In that wonderous treasure of a record we can hear Ballades 4, 19 and the aforementioned Douce dame jolie, all of which feature on our current Hyperion release. The Orlando Consort give B4 in a 2 voice version with Mark Dobell and Donald Greig. Blue Heron on their record offer the same work also in 2vv (in what is a beautiful contemplative performance expanded to 5:37 as opposed to The Orlando Consort’s 4:35). Gothic Voices give us B4 in 3 parts involving Margaret Philpot, Rogers Covey-Crump and Andrew King. It is a sublime account of the early yet magnificent work. “I have no pleasure, no joy, nor do I sing anymore as I used to”. In B19 Gothic Voices are heavenly. The blending of Margaret Philpot with Rogers Covey-Crump is a very special sound and a great advert for early music generally I think.

In considering the remaining pieces on The Orlando Consort’s last record allow me to draw attention to a few more highlights. In the selection of Motets we are offered M19 an interesting vita of Saint Quentin who was revered in Northern France. Machaut’s Motets (the form was considered the paragon of the Ars Musica) are quite short and apart from 3 late examples they all date from quite early in his career. This one may come from as early as 1335.

Of the Ballades we have already discussed three examples. De petit po B18 was at the time one of Machaut’s most popular compositions and exists in numerous manuscripts across Europe. It is in three voices here but the notes (excellent as always) tell us it exists in two and four part versions too. In this work our singers keep up a pulsating rhythm and vigour that I find nicely effective for the work.

B40 may well be one of Machaut’s very last works. The lyrics are once again pure courtly love. The ardour and devotion is intense. It is hard for us to grasp today how noble it must have seemed to the contemporary audience for a lover to devote his whole being, his whole life to the pursuit and worship of one chaste, pure yet ultimately disdainful lady. 

Machaut lived through some fascinating times. I have narrated some of the events he would have been involved with or aware of in my recent Machaut reviews but there were other big things happening too that I haven’t alluded to. One historical episode that must have had an effect on Machaut and the circles he worked in was the so-called Avignon Papacy. From 1309 onwards due to the huge influential reach of the French King Philip IV the seat of the Roman Catholic church moved from Rome to the Papal enclave of Avignon in the Kingdom of Arles. There it stayed for 67 years. After moving back to Rome there then followed a period of Antipopes and a schism in the church. A mini Ice-Age, the Black Death, revolts, wars; perhaps one can understand why Machaut thought some diversionary love poetry and charming music might be so necessary after-all. 

In Machaut’s Rondeaux we hear an intimate side to the composer. Our selection includes R1 possibly one of Machaut’s first attempts at polyphony and R21 which is very late. In this late work a 3vv example of the form, Mark Dobell once again impresses with his solid technique and breath control. Of the four Virelais on this record V26 is a rare example of a two-part work taken here by the two tenor voices. In V19 and 27 Matthew Venner and Mark Dobell respectively are sweet-toned and elegant as always. 

So they did it. The Orlando Consort’s project to record the complete polyphonic chansons and motets is complete with a large measure of monophonic works included to boot. All the previous instalments have been covered on MusicWeb. It is an epic achievement and both The Orlando Consort and Hyperion Records deserve hearty praise and thanks. I do wish the group had done the Messe de Nostre Dame for Hyperion. True they recorded this for Harmonia Mundi in 2007 where they were joined by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir but I find this performance unsatisfactory and would have loved them to have had another go at it either in a one voice per part version or by employing a little extra help from perhaps colleagues in The Sixteen or Tallis Scholars. Let us be grateful for what we have though; it is a wonderful legacy.

Philip Harrison