Hyperion Records

Charles d’Orléans was one of the great masters of the rondel and probably the best of the fifteenth-century poètes courtois. He was taken prisoner at Agincourt and remained in prison in England for twenty-five years. On returning to France he lived at Blois where his court was a centre of the arts. His use of the rondel form (in a way a verbal prison where one’s choices of rhyme are confined by the form) is only one indication of Charles’s great technical skill in these later years.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1996