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Track(s) taken from CDA68008

Lasse! comment oublieray / Se j'aim mon loial amy / Pour quoy me bat mes maris?

composer
3vv; Motet 16
author of text

The Orlando Consort
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
CD-Quality:
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: 2 minutes 45 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)
The tenor of Motet 16 is classified as a chanson de mal mariée (a song of bad marriage), in which a wife complains that her husband beats her wrongfully, only because she spoke alone with her male friend. The text of the song that Machaut uses for the tenor is found in a collection of popular dance song texts from around 1300 now in Oxford (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308), a source that contains no music. Machaut’s polyphonic realization provides an opportunity to expand upon the simple original text: the triplum voice, in a higher poetic register, offers a quasi-narrative account of the unhappy wife’s history in which she had to leave the man she loved in order to marry her husband. The shorter motetus text reinforces this story with a restatement of the complaint of the tenor: if she loves the man who is not her husband nobly and chastely, why does her husband berate her?

from notes by Anne Stone © 2015

Le tenor du motet 16 est classé parmi les chansons de mal mariée, où une femme se plaint de ce que son mari la bat à tort, juste parce qu’elle a parlé seule à son ami. Les paroles utilisées pour le tenor se trouvent dans un populaire recueil de chansons à danser (sans musique aucune) daté de 1300 environ et actuellement conservé à Oxford (Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308). La réalisation polyphonique de Machaut permet de développer le texte original simple: la voix de triplum, dans un registre poétique supérieur, propose un récit quasi narratif de l’histoire de la femme malheureuse, obligée de quitter l’homme qu’elle aimait pour se marier. Le texte du motetus, plus court, appuie cette histoire en redisant la complainte du tenor: si elle aime noblement et chastement l’homme qui n’est pas son mari, pourquoi celui-ci la réprimande-t-il?

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

Der Tenor der Motette 16 ist zusätzlich in der Kategorie der chanson de mal mariée (wörtlich: Lied der schlecht Verheirateten), in der eine Ehefrau sich beklagt, dass ihr Mann sie zu Unrecht schlägt, nur weil sie mit einem befreundeten Mann gesprochen hat. Der Text, den Machaut für die Tenorstimme verwendet, findet sich in einer Sammlung populärer Tanzliedertexte aus der Zeit um 1300, die heute in Oxford aufbewahrt wird (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308); eine Quelle, die keinerlei Noten enthält. Machauts polyphone Behandlung bietet Gelegenheit dazu, den simplen Originaltext auszuarbeiten: die Triplum-Stimme befindet sich auf einem höheren poetischen Niveau und ist sozusagen eine erzählerische Darstellung der Geschichte der unglücklichen Ehefrau, die ihren Geliebten verlassen musste, um ihren Mann zu heiraten. Der kürzere Motetus-Text bekräftigt diese Geschichte mit einer Wiederholung der Klage des Tenors: Weshalb schilt ihr Ehemann sie, wenn sie den Anderen in nobler und tugendhafter Weise liebt?

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

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