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ANONYMOUS . CESARIS . CORDIER . FONTEYNS . MACHAUT

Lancaster and Valois

GOTHIC VOICES

FRENCH & ENGLISH MUSIC

CHRISTOPHER PAGE

c 1350 –1420

Truly, it seems to me very unusual and very novel … in

my opinion, it is a long time since I have made anything

so good. (Guillaume de Machaut, letter to Peronne, c 1360)

T HIS IS THE MOST PROLIFIC COMPOSER of the fourteenth

exploratory and innovative process, and indeed the sheer

originality of much fourteenth-century French music is very

striking. Once we have penetrated sufficiently far into this

repertoire to see beyond the obvious similarities of style and

technique which characterize all Ars Nova chansons, we find

that the variety of the music is inexhaustible; in piece after

piece it seems that a composer has looked for a fresh solution

to the artistic problems of making a successful polyphonic

song. Some composers settle for the kind of simple loveli-

ness that distinguishes many of the finest fourteenth-century

French songs, especially those to be found among the

hundreds of anonymous pieces. Puis qu’autrement ne puis

avoir 2 is an example. Others, however, look further afield.

Soit tart, tempre, main ou soir 3 explores the possibilities of

a carefully controlled, luxuriant harmony in four parts that is

deliciously embittered at certain points by musica ficta

adjustments (primarily some strategic uses of G sharp) that

owe something to the mature style of Guillaume de Machaut,

both in his secular works and in the Messe de Nostre Dame .

From the number of sharps in the sources of this piece it is

plain that the scribes who copied Soit tart, tempre, main ou

soir were not sure how far this process of musica ficta

colouring should extend. In Tres gentil cuer 4 we hear Solage,

one of the most gifted composers of the fourteenth century,

working with three parts to develop some of the ideas that

reach their zenith in his four-part virelai Joieux de cuer , which

can be be heard on The Medieval Romantics (Helios

CDH55293). These include an almost relentlessly polymetric

texture (in which, to use modern concepts and terminology,

is constantly set against ), and the rhythmic figure in the

Cantus shown here in Example 2, a fingerprint of Solage’s

style. In Quand je ne voy 6 Guillaume de Machaut sets out to

century, Guillaume de Machaut, referring to a polyphonic

song that he had recently composed. Although Machaut is

describing the individuality of his own work in this letter, his

description of the ballade in question as ‘very unusual’ ( mout

estrainges ) and ‘very novel’ ( mout nouviaus ) evokes the whole

repertoire of fourteenth-century French music. In Middle

French estrainges means ‘unusual’, ‘strange’ or even ‘incom-

prehensible’, and it is easy to believe that Machaut and other

composers of the Ars Nova were proud of the exotic effects that

their music released when performed, effects so fleeting that

they cannot all have been foreseen during the compositional

process. Sometimes, it seems, the French composers of the

fourteenth century directed their parts with a mischievously

subversive attitude to harmony that was not shared by their

successors in the fifteenth. It is hard to imagine the mature

Dufay, for example, creating the wanton minor second that

Solage produces, by impeccable melodic logic, in the third

measure of Tres gentil cuer (Example 1).

As for Machaut’s nouviaus , its meanings are similar to

estrainges , including ‘unusual’, ‘original’ and ‘novel’; like

estrainges , it seems designed to present composition as an

EXAMPLE 1

EXAMPLE 2

spin a substantial piece with only the barest minimum of text,

setting certain syllables to extended melismas that use melo-

dic sequence, a device that occasionally attracted him.

However estrainges or nouviaus these pieces may be, they

often display a lucid structure of words and music that a

fourteenth-century listener would have searched for in any

new piece. Guillaume de Machaut’s two-part ballade Riches

d’amour 9 provides an excellent introduction to this struc-

turing. Machaut’s ballades in this vein are often superbly

designed to display the best in a beautiful voice, discreetly

accompanied by another voice or (as here) by an instrument,

and exploiting the kind of tactical tuning that is vital in the

performance of his works. (Notice, for example, how the

cadential major sixth is widened in the first line at ‘ men dians’,

or in the third at ‘ di seteus’.) As we listen to the piece and read

the text, we discern that each line of the poetry forms a

complete musical phrase, and that within these larger phrases

Machaut scrupulously relates the sub-phrases to the position

of the caesura (generally after the fourth syllable). The opening

lines, for example, are treated in this way:

Riches d’amour · et mendians d’amie (4+6)

Povres d’espoir · et garnis de desir (4+6)

The musical setting follows the metrical structure with

complete fidelity.

The sheer verve of the pieces recorded here accounts

for much of their attraction. They defy any faint-hearted

performance. A passage from Machaut’s Donnez, signeurs 1

offers a particularly striking example (Example 3). In measure

9 the Contratenor provides a momentary pedal point beneath a

flourish in the Cantus that audaciously snatches at F sharp

(a pungent note in a piece built on C and F) and which seems

particularly extrovert for the way the upward movement e–f–g

is rushed through twice in succession.

The fluidity of the Cantus throughout this section—and the

inability of modern notation with regular barring to express

it—is shown by the brackets above the stave which mark out

what are, viewed in rhythmic terms, four virtually identical

EXAMPLE 3

phrases. They are superbly balanced in their rhythmic weight

and melodic contour. As these phrases dash past, the

Contratenor chases the Tenor in measure 11, just a quaver

beat behind, invigorating a simple cadential pattern with

displacement syncopation that resolves quite conventionally in

measure 12. The accented dissonances in measure 11 also

contrive to give that measure a thrilling sense of forceful and

directed motion.

The English Pieces

As yet there is remarkably little evidence that polyphonic

rondeaux, virelais and ballades of the kind composed in France

were much appreciated in England. Consequently, the English

pieces on this recording are all either Mass compositions or

devotional works with Latin texts. The anonymous Sanctus bn

can claim to represent a strong fourteenth-century tradition in

English Mass music: sonorous and highly succesful within

certain bounds. Each voice declaims the same words at the

same moment which enhances the sonorousness of the piece

by synchronizing the vowels. The Marian Regali ex progenie bo

by Fonteyns represents a slightly more elaborated version of

this same technique, and one which even the Old Hall

composers of the front rank (such as Power) continued to

cultivate. In contrast, the isorhythmic motet by Sturgeon, Salve

mater Domini / Salve templum gracie bm , comes from the

youngest layer of the Old Hall repertoire and has a strong claim

to represent one kind of English music that impressed

continental musicians in the earlier fifteenth century.

By far the most impressive of the English pieces—and

perhaps the most impressive piece on this recording—is the

four-part Credo by Pycard 5 . This composer is possibly to be

identified with a singer of that name who was a clerk in the

chapel of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, around 1390 and

perhaps still there in 1399. This piece, which is vast by

medieval standards (for it runs to some six minutes of through-

composed polyphony in four parts) places Pycard into the front

rank of European composers between the 1380 and 1420;

taken together with his other works (such as the five-part

Gloria recorded by Gothic Voices on The Service of Venus and

Mars , Hyperion CDS44251/3) they show him to be perhaps the

most talented composer on the European scene during those

forty years. He outclasses the much more famous Ciconia,

whose Mass music is of limited interest for the most part, and

what Ciconia has in his best motets—a rhythmic energy, a

love of short melodic phrases that chase one another in the

upper voices in a most exhilarating way—Pycard also has.

(Indeed, there is much in Pycard’s music that one might wish

to trace to Italian example.) Pycard brings to these things a

love of full, triadic sonority that is alien to Ciconia and

distinctively English.

existence around 1400 and which is undoubtedly connected

with the giving of New Year presents (a ceremony lavishly

described in an English context in the Middle English romance

of Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight ). The tone of such

festivities would seem to have suited the new mood of the

French chanson after 1400, lighter and fresher. Cesaris was

one of the composers who, according to Martin le Franc,

enjoyed great success in Parisian circles and whose music

was fashionable before the advent of Guillaume Dufay and

Binchois. His rondeau Se vous scaviez, ma tres douce

maistresse br is a fine example of early fifteenth-century song

style: a relatively plain, compact and memorable melody is set

over a Tenor and Contratenor that create dissonance in a highly

controlled fashion. (Sheer tunefulness, in a form that modern

listeners can often instantly recognize, is a priority with early

fifteenth-century French composers.) His double rondeau Mon

seul voloir / Certes m’amour bp , a ravishing piece, has all the

same qualities and there is no difficulty in understanding how

such a piece might have ‘astonished all Paris’ in the words of

Martin le Franc.

Lancaster and Valois

Lancaster and Valois : the two royal houses that reigned during

the periods of English and French music presented on this

recording. The English pieces by Pycard 5 , Sturgeon bm ,

Fonteyns bo and the composer of an anonymous Sanctus bn ,

have been taken from the Old Hall manuscript, the celebrated

collection of English liturgical polyphony that was probably

compiled for use in the chapel of Thomas, Duke of Clarence.

The French pieces include four by Guillaume de Machaut

169bl , whose musical and literary works attracted the

attention of some of the highest in France during the fourteenth

century. This recording opens with his flamboyant ballade

Donnez, signeurs 1 , a call to the magnates of France to show

largesse in accordance with their exalted dignity. Of the other

composers featured here, Solage 4 composed one piece in

honour of Jean, Duke of Berry and another ( Le mont aon , not

The French Pieces of the fifteenth century

Baude Cordier’s Ce jour de l’an bq represents a category of

piece—the New Year song—that seems to have sprung into

attributed to him in the sources) in praise of Gaston Phebus,

Count of Foix and Bearn. Cesaris bp br , whose music was

much admired in Parisian circles during the early fifteenth

century, served the Dukes of Berry and Anjou, while Baude

Cordier bq served the Valois Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy

as a valet de chambre in the 1390s (if he is to be identified

with the harpist Baude Fresnel, which some are inclined to

doubt).

Also available by GOTHIC VOICES directed by CHRISTOPHER PAGE

Music for the Lion-Hearted King

Music to mark the 800th anniversary of the Coronation of

King Richard I of England in Westminster Abbey, 3 September 1189

Compact Disc CDH55292

‘This is rather special—the best record I have ever reviewed’ ( Gramophone )

The Spirits of England and France

Music for Court and Church from the later Middle Ages

Compact Disc CDH55281

‘Beautiful performances of gorgeous, accessible music. Marvellous all the way.

All should rush and buy’ ( Classic CD )

The Castle of Fair Welcome

Courtly songs of the later fifteenth century

Compact Disc CDH55274

‘The sound is beautifully carved out, and the ensemble includes some of Britain’s

finest singers’ ( Gramophone )

The Garden of Zephirus

Courtly songs of the early fifteenth century

Compact Disc CDH55289

‘I believe this is the finest record of medieval polyphonic song yet produced’

( Gramophone )

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Motets and songs from thirteenth-century France

Compact Disc CDH55273

‘Gothic Voices at its most imaginative’ ( BBC Music Magazine )

The Medieval Romantics

French Songs and Motets, 1340 –1440

Compact Disc CDH55293

‘A revelatory disc. If the ravishing sound of the ensemble does not convince you that

this music is of the highest quality, then nothing will’ ( The Good CD Guide )

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