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Track(s) taken from CDA68008

Il m'est avis qu'il n'est dons de nature

composer
4vv; Ballade 22
author of text

The Orlando Consort
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
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Recording details: January 2013
Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Loughton, Essex, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by David Hinitt
Release date: February 2015
Total duration: 6 minutes 21 seconds

Cover artwork: May: courtly figures on horseback (Très riches heures du Duc de Berry). Pol de Limbourg (dc1416)
Musée Condé, Chantilly, France / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images
 

Other recordings available for download

Gothic Voices, Christopher Page (conductor)

Reviews

‘The programme is nicely varied in mood and scoring, ranging from four-voice ballades and motets to a single-voice virelai, and every combination in between … a thoughtful essay by Anne Stone makes audible sense of the many connections between the pieces on this valuable, impressive recording’ (Gramophone)

‘The performers seem most at home in the motets with secular words … fluently and sweetly performed’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More
RECORDING
PERFORMANCE

‘The Orlando Consort … celebrate the fourteenth-century French composer-poet Guillaume de Machaut with a selection of his numerous motets and songs … on the theme of courtly love and its diversions … Machaut, in the skilled hands of these musicians, turns … brutalities into music of ethereal purity, pulsating with poised, almost jaunty rhythms. Music for quiet concentration’ (The Guardian)» More

‘The artistic merits of The Orlando Consort are legendary, and these four male singers deliver performances of great beauty and expressiveness … full of elegant fluency, verve, and nuanced inflection’ (American Record Guide)

‘The second anthology in The Orlando Consort’s Machaut marathon…[is] characterised by supreme text—sensitivity and beauty of tone. One marvels at their trademark exquisite balance and their ability to reveal even the most complex of Machaut’s structures with enviable agreement and ensemble’ (Early Music Today)

‘The Orlando Consort perform these works with matchless purity of tone and clarity of diction’ (Limelight, Australia)» More

‘The Orlando Consort … do their best to make the music as accessible to the modern listener as it would have been to Machaut’s contemporaries without compromising on authenticity … lovers of Machaut’s music are becoming more fortunate all the time’ (MusicWeb International)» More

‘[This recording] offers a greater mix of pieces which amply demonstrate just why Machaut occupies such a crucial position in medieval music … the listener is transported into a richly rewarding and endlessly fascinating soundworld in which poetry and music are entwined as they can only be when they flow from the same pen … deeply satisfying while still whetting one's appetite for more’ (The Europadisc Review)» More

«La séduction so british des Orlando aura ses partisans» (Diapason, France)» More

'Limpide e calde sono le voci dell’Orlando Consort, a loro agio nella frequentazione del repertorio tre-quattrocentesco, al quale hanno dedicato numerose e importanti incisioni. Esemplare risulta l’equilibrio sonoro, frutto di un approfondito lavoro interpretativo, che I quattro solisti offrono interagendo con preziosi melismi e un approccio vocale consono a questo repertorio' (Musica, Italy)
Il m’est avis qu’il n’est dons de nature (Ballade 22) is unusual among Machaut’s songs for its moralizing sentiment. It is a bitter diatribe against Fortune, and while the vagaries of Fortune are a central theme of Machaut’s work, this is no love story for which Fortune’s wheel is the backdrop. Rather, the text’s speaker lashes out at Fortune in general terms, calling her a monster whose ‘goods are nothing but wind and chance, / Mistakenly bestowed and in error taken away’. The sentiments here closely paraphrase those of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, which Machaut is known to have read carefully and to have based other works upon.

from notes by Anne Stone © 2015

Il m’est avis qu’il n’est dons de nature (ballade 22) affiche, chose rare chez Machaut, un sentiment moralisateur. Cette diatribe amère n’est pas une histoire d’amour avec, en toile de fond, la roue de la Fortune—dont les caprices forment, il est vrai, un thème central dans l’œuvre de Machaut. Non, le narrateur fustige plutôt la Fortune, qu’il dépeint comme un monstre «dont les biens ne sont rien que le vent et la chance / Accordés à tort et repris par erreur». Ces sentiments paraphrasent étroitement ceux de la Consolation philosophique de Boèce, que Machaut lut, on le sait, attentivement et sur laquelle il fonda plusieurs autres pièces.

extrait des notes rédigées par Anne Stone © 2015
Français: Hypérion

Il m’est avis qu’il n’est dons de nature (Ballade 22) hat ein stark moralisierendes Element und ist damit kein typisches Machaut-Lied. Es handelt sich um eine heftige Tirade gegen Fortuna, und obwohl die Launen Fortunas ein zentrales Thema in Machauts Oeuvre sind, ist dies keine Liebesgeschichte, in der das Glücksrad den Hintergrund liefern könnte. Stattdessen beklagt sich die Erzählstimme des Texts allgemein über Fortuna und bezeichnet sie als Monstrum, deren „Güter nichts als Wind und Zufall“ seien, die „fälschlich beschert und irrtümlich genommen“ würden. Diese Kommentare fassen den Trost der Philosophie von Boethius recht akkurat zusammen—es ist bekannt, dass Machaut dieses Werk sorgfältig studiert und es auch anderen Werken zugrunde gelegt hatte.

aus dem Begleittext von Anne Stone © 2015
Deutsch: Viola Scheffel

Other albums featuring this work

The Spirits of England & France, Vol. 3
CDH55283Download only
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