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Track(s) taken from CDA68008

S'Amours ne fait par sa grace adoucir

composer
2vv; Ballade 1
author of text

The Orlando Consort
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
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Studio Master:
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 57 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
 

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)
Although, as with the motets, it is difficult to establish a clear chronology of the ballades, it is tempting to regard S’Amours ne fait par sa grace adoucir (Ballade 1) as an initial experiment in writing the polyphonic ballade form. Ballades usually consist of three poetic stanzas and have a two-part musical structure that features a repetition of the A section, yielding the form AABC where C is a shared refrain line found at the end of each of the three stanzas, often set off musically from the B section by a strong cadence. Ballade 1 has the unusual feature that the poetic lines of each section are set to identical rhythms, though different pitches. In other words, the rhythmic structure of the song could be diagrammed as x-x-x-x-y-y-y, where each letter stands for the rhythmic setting of each poetic line. The two rhythmic modules x and y, moreover, share many features. The result is an extremely unified rhythmic surface with markedly audible rhythmic recurrences: for example, a section of ‘hocket’ (hiccup) technique in which the two voices alternate short notes, and a pervasive iambic figuration. This is the most elaborately constructed of all Machaut’s ballades; while many of his later songs provide unification through repetition of rhythmic patterns, none does so to this degree.

from notes by Anne Stone © 2015

Comme les motets, ces ballades rendent difficile l’établissement d’une chronologie limpide, mais il est tentant de voir en S’Amours ne fait par sa grace adoucir (ballade 1) une première incursion dans la ballade polyphonique. Les ballades comptent généralement trois strophes et présentent une structure musicale à deux parties qui fait intervenir une reprise de la section A, générant une forme AABC, où C est un vers-refrain commun à la fin de chacune des trois strophes et souvent lancé musicalement, à partir de la section B, par une cadence forte. La ballade 1 a ceci d’insolite que les vers de chaque section sont mis en musique sur des rythmes identiques, quoique à des hauteurs de son différentes. En d’autres termes, la structure rythmique de cette chanson pourrait être représentée ainsi: x-x-x-x-y-y-y, chaque lettre symbolisant la mise en musique rythmique de chaque vers. Les deux modules rythmiques x et y partagent, par ailleurs, de nombreuses caractéristiques. D’où une surface rythmique des plus unifiée, avec des récurrences sensiblement audibles, telle cette section en «hocket» où les deux voix font alterner des valeurs brèves et une omniprésente figuration iambique. Jamais Machaut ne construira de ballades plus complexes et jamais plus la répétition des schémas rythmiques ne viendra à ce point homogénéiser ses chansons.

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

Obwohl es ebenso wie bei den Motetten schwierig ist, eine klare Chronologie dieser Frühwerke zu erstellen, liegt es wohl nahe, dass S’Amours ne fait par sa grace adoucir (Ballade 1) ein erstes Experiment in der polyphonen Balladenform ist. Balladen bestehen meist aus drei dichterischen Strophen und haben eine zweiteilige musikalische Anlage, wobei der A-Teil wiederholt wird, so dass sich eine AABC-Form ergibt, bei der C eine Refrain-Zeile ist, die jeweils am Ende der drei Strophen kommt und musikalisch im B-Teil von einer starken Kadenz initiiert wird. Die Ballade 1 hat die ungewöhnliche Eigenschaft, dass die (dichterischen) Zeilen in jedem Abschnitt mit identischen Rhythmen vertont sind, jedoch in unterschiedlichen Tonhöhen. Mit anderen Worten, die rhythmische Struktur des Lieds könnte schematisch als x-x-x-x-y-y-y dargestellt werden, wobei die Buchstaben jeweils die rhythmische Vertonung der Zeilen bezeichnen. Den beiden rhythmischen Modulen x und y ist allerdings mehreres gemeinsam. Es ergibt sich eine äußerst vereinheitlichte rhythmische Oberfläche mit deutlich hörbaren rhythmischen Wiederholungen, so etwa ein Hoketus-Abschnitt, in dem kurze Noten in den beiden Stimmen abgewechselt werden, sowie eine dominante jambische Figuration. Diese ist die von allen Balladen Machauts am kunstvollsten konstruierte; während in vielen seiner späteren Lieder durch das Wiederholen von rhythmischen Mustern eine einheitliche Struktur erzeugt wird, ist dies doch nirgends so ausgeprägt wie hier.

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

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