Quant en moy / Amour et biauté parfaite / Amara valde (Machaut) - from CDA68008 - Hyperion Records

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)

Seventeen of Machaut’s twenty-three motets are found in the earliest manuscript of his music, the so-called Manuscript C (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fr. 1586), copied around 1350. Although we do not know whether the order in which they are found in the manuscript reflects the order in which he composed them, the text of Motet 1 (Quant en moy / Amour et biauté parfaite / Amara valde) does refer suggestively to when the poet was ‘first’ in love. The liturgical tenor of this motet, Amara valde (‘Very bitter’), is echoed in the triplum’s final words: ‘And so I say with a sigh: / It is great folly to love so much / That you make your sweetness bitter.’ The word-play between the two meanings of ‘amer’ (which means both ‘love’ and ‘bitter’) summarizes the meaning of the text as a whole: both the triplum and motetus texts meditate on the painful aspect of love.

Dix-sept des vingt-trois motets de Machaut figurent dans son plus ancien manuscrit musical, le «Manuscrit C» (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fr. 1586), copié vers 1350. On ignore si ces pièces sont agencées dans leur ordre de composition, mais le texte du Motet 1 (Quant en moy / Amour et biauté parfaite / Amara valde) renvoie de manière suggestive à l’époque où le poète fut amoureux «pour la première fois». Le tenor liturgique, Amara valde («Très amer»), trouve un écho dans les derniers mots du triplum: «Et ainsi je dis, avec un soupir: / C’est grande folie de tant aimer / Que vous rendez votre douceur amère». Le jeu de mots entre les deux acceptions d’«amer» («amour» et «amer») résume le sens global du texte: les paroles du triplum et du motetus sont une méditation sur la douleur de l’amour.

Von Machauts 23 Motetten finden sich 17 in dem ältesten Manuskript seiner Musik, das sogenannte Manuskript C (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fr. 1586), das etwa um 1350 erstellt wurde. Obwohl nicht bekannt ist, ob die Reihenfolge in dem Manuskript der Reihenfolge ihrer Entstehung entspricht, verweist der Text der ersten Motette (Quant en moy / Amour et biauté parfaite / Amara valde) auf die „erste“ Liebe des Komponisten. Die liturgische Tenorstimme dieser Motette, Amara valde („Sehr bitter“), wird in den letzten Worten des Triplums wiederholt: „Und so sage ich mit einem Seufzer: / Es ist toll, so viel zu lieben / dass die Süße bitter wird.“ Das Wortspiel mit den beiden Bedeutungen von „amer“ (was sowohl „Liebe“ als auch „bitter“ heißt) fasst die Aussage des Texts insgesamt zusammen: sowohl Triplum als auch Motetus meditieren über den schmerzvollen Aspekt der Liebe.

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: 3 minutes 50 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

Quant en moy / Amour et biauté parfaite / Amara valde

The Orlando Consort

Reviews

Introduction