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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Jeremy Summerly's Camerata give a sturdy, controlled, yet vigorous rendering of Machaut's greatest achievement, the Messe de Notre Dame, possibly the most famous, certainly one of the most eminent pieces of the Medieval age. The rest of the tracks are not mere trifles simply to lard out the CD, though: the secular pieces from Le Voir Dit are not only splendid, but insightful too, revealing a great deal about the (not altogether pure!) mind of one of Medieval music's most interesting figures, and treated with similar verve by Summerly and his accomplished colleagues. For scholars of music, enthusiasts of history or simply those who have an ear for something that is very beautiful, please do buy this - there's really no excuse at the budget price!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I'm not yet one of those people who has heard many recordings of Machaut; This cd was my introduction to his music and poetry. But it totally blew me away! The music is exquisite and very relaxing to listen to. There's more than a hint of melancholy but not the sound is not oppressive. It is full, rich and passionate but still betrays great sadness.
My personal favourite is the very long monophonic song from Le Voir Dit. At first, I couldn't see how I could keep interested in such a form but now I see it as inspired. One man, alone, singing what's in his heart. It doesn't get much simpler.
To put the icing on the cake, the sound of the recording is close to holy. That might sound wishy-washy but I mean it. They used a audio group called Sensaura who capture the ambience of the cathedral in amazing way.
I thoroughly recommend this cd to anyone who wants to go further back into the music of the past.
My personal favourite is the very long monophonic song from Le Voir Dit. At first, I couldn't see how I could keep interested in such a form but now I see it as inspired. One man, alone, singing what's in his heart. It doesn't get much simpler.
To put the icing on the cake, the sound of the recording is close to holy. That might sound wishy-washy but I mean it. They used a audio group called Sensaura who capture the ambience of the cathedral in amazing way.
I thoroughly recommend this cd to anyone who wants to go further back into the music of the past.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is probably as early as most people go with "early music", being composed around 1365 and the first setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to one composer - who was also a poet much admired by Chaucer.
The performance style here is my antidote to the controversial practice adopted by Marcel Pérès and the Ensemble Organum (see my review) which employs an incongruous singing style derived from Corsican tradition with much groaning, sliding and ornamentation. Some enjoy that iconoclastic approach but I prefer to hear the music as it is done here by a small, professional choir who do are never too monochrome or precious and happy to inject the occasional little turn in the line as indicted by the "plicas" which appear in 14C music and for the last time in Machaut's manuscript. There are four parts rather than the conventional three, a contratenor moving around the same tessitura as the tenor. The singing, led by Robin Blaze's mellifluous countertenor, is usually smooth and harmonious but sometimes agreeably tangy and just a little harsh when they want to avoid sounding too comfortable and emphasise those surprising harmonic twists and excursions into the minor. The acoustic of Reims Cathedral is perfect: clear yet spacious with enough reverberance to suggest vertical space.
The second half of the recital consists of songs from "Le Voir Dit" and has the more intimate acoustic deriving from a studio recording, as befits these passionate outpourings from the courtly tradition charting the course of a December-May romance between the poet-composer and a young admirer.
Thus this disc provides a window on an age devoid of self-conscious preciousness in that erotic love and devotion to God could be expressed with equal fervour and sincerity.
Full texts and translations are provided.
The performance style here is my antidote to the controversial practice adopted by Marcel Pérès and the Ensemble Organum (see my review) which employs an incongruous singing style derived from Corsican tradition with much groaning, sliding and ornamentation. Some enjoy that iconoclastic approach but I prefer to hear the music as it is done here by a small, professional choir who do are never too monochrome or precious and happy to inject the occasional little turn in the line as indicted by the "plicas" which appear in 14C music and for the last time in Machaut's manuscript. There are four parts rather than the conventional three, a contratenor moving around the same tessitura as the tenor. The singing, led by Robin Blaze's mellifluous countertenor, is usually smooth and harmonious but sometimes agreeably tangy and just a little harsh when they want to avoid sounding too comfortable and emphasise those surprising harmonic twists and excursions into the minor. The acoustic of Reims Cathedral is perfect: clear yet spacious with enough reverberance to suggest vertical space.
The second half of the recital consists of songs from "Le Voir Dit" and has the more intimate acoustic deriving from a studio recording, as befits these passionate outpourings from the courtly tradition charting the course of a December-May romance between the poet-composer and a young admirer.
Thus this disc provides a window on an age devoid of self-conscious preciousness in that erotic love and devotion to God could be expressed with equal fervour and sincerity.
Full texts and translations are provided.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Exceptional vocal talent dulled by the recording quality
I've now probably got something like eight or nine recordings of Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame, one of the treasures of early music, in fact of all music anywhere and of any time -... Read more
Published 4 months ago by E. L. Wisty
Austere medieval music
This is beautifully sung 14th century music. I have listened to it a few times and I still find it a little austere.
Published on 27 Feb 2008 by Aquinas
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