Les Tres Riches Heures Du Moyen Age - A Medieval Journey [6-CD] (1995)

Largely uncharted territory for almost everybody, often underestimated in its complexity and variety, and spanning over a thousand years of musical history is the range of musical styles that is usually defined as Early Music. 'Early' as in 'primitive', 'simple', or even 'barbaric'? Not at all. To find out for yourself, A Medieval Journey provides you with more than seven hours of the finest medieval music, all placed in its appropriate historical context. In case you're interested but new to all this, I would advise you to start with either cd three, four or five and then move forwards or backwards in time. Especially the first two cds may be a little unaccessible if you don't know what to expect. Also, it seems that as Europe became richer over time, ecclesiastic music began to show ever more points of contact with folk music. Finally to reach its apex, of course, in the collected works of Britney Spears. More on this last point in each of the entries further down.

I often find that Early Music is particularly pleasing to my over-sensitive, post-Romantic mindset, probably as it's colder and more abstract than anything after Bach and before WW2. It doesn't doesn't attempt to stimulate my emotions or imagination (compare with e.g. any Romantic composer or any non-Modernist opera), but I can't say it's un-emotional either. Bwah, I can go on like this forever (repetition as the prime definition of hell), so you should just go ahead and chicken out for yourself. I hope some of you find this incredibly rich collection as delightful as I do, and that it may open up a new world of musical exploratory ventures.

These cds were copied many years ago, about the 4th century of our guilt-ridden christian era. Because of this the last track on all cds is missing and sometimes (rarely though) you can hear a bad-copy 'glitch'. As I also don't have the booklets anymore and only had access to a printable list, I decided to remake all the covers and inlays from scratch. And I must say, I think did a fine job and it was actually fun looking for images. I noticed some small errors here and there, too bad about that. Above all, enjoy the music!


CD 1 - The Dawn of the Christian Era
This 6-cd collection begins in the 4th century of our guilt-ridden christian era in ancient Byzantium, where the roots of many of our liturgic traditions can be found. Over time this has become less apparent in Western Europe, but much of slavic Europe (Bulgaria, etc) still follows the orthodox tradition. Highly devotional, even mystical, vocal arrangements conduce to an atmosphere that is at times both dark and deep. Listening to this, I always wonder what effect it might have had on people in those days.

Strictly speaking, Byzantine music is the medieval sacred chant of Christian Churches following the Orthodox rite. This tradition, encompassing the Greek-speaking world, developed in Byzantium from the establishment of its capital, Constantinople, in 330 until its fall in 1453. It is undeniably of composite origin, drawing on the artistic and technical productions of the classical age, on Jewish music, and inspired by the monophonic vocal music that evolved in the early Christian cities of Alexandria, Antioch and Epheus. Ideas of originality and free invention similar to those seen in later music probably never existed in early Byzantine times. The very notion of using traditional formulas (or melody-types) as a compositional technique shows an archaic concept in liturgical chant, and is quite the opposite of free, original creation.

In the desert monasteries psalms were sung by a soloist who intoned the verses slowly and in a loud voice. The monks were seated on the ground or on small stools because they were weakened by fasts and other austerities. They listened and meditated in their hearts on the words which they heard. The monks gave little thought to precisely which psalms were being used - they were little concerned, for example, with choosing texts that made specific reference to the time of the day; that is, psalms appropriate to the morning or ones appropriate to the evening. Since the primary purpose of the monastic services was meditation, the psalms were sung in a meditative way and in numerical order. The desert monastic office as a whole was marked by its lack of ceremony.

But in the secular cathedrals the psalms were not rendered in numerical order; rather, they consisted of appropriate psalms that were selected for their specific reference to the hour of the day or for their subject matter which suited the spirit of the occasion for the service. The urban services also included meaningful ceremonies such as the lighting of the lamps and the offering of incense. Moreover, a great deal of emphasis was placed on active congregational participation. The psalms were not sung by a soloist totally alone but in a responsorial or antiphonal manner in which congregational groups sang a refrain after the psalm verses. The idea was to have everyone involved in an effort of common celebration: there was no place here for individual contemplation.

CD1_The_Dawn_of_the_Christian_Era_256_vbr.part1.rar
CD1_The_Dawn_of_the_Christian_Era_256_vbr.part2.rar

Note: The table of contents contains an error at the bottom. You can easily remove this with any image editing program. What should be deleted is :"De Saint Bernard".


CD 2 - The Reign of Gregorian Chant
Unfortunately most of us have had the pleasure to experience the musical shit-shower that is Enigma, so to our already guilt-ridden consience is added a horrible misconception of Gregorian chant. The chant is music of great variety, from simple recitation to complex, melismatic melodies requiring the vocal skills of trained cantors. Much of the chant repertory continues to be sung by monastic communities, who have no special musical training, and is easily within the capabilities of parish choirs today, especially when limited numbers preclude singing in harmony. It is functional music, designed to serve the needs of the Church's liturgy; it is also widely regarded for its 'timeless' character.

The Gregorian Chant repertory was developed for Latin texts in Charlemagne's (768-814 AD) Frankish kingdom, which encompassed modern France, Switzerland and Germany (and Belgium goddamnit!). We know little of the Church singing used in these areas before this time, because no modern Western system of music writing had yet been invented. Charlemagne wished the music of the Church in his kingdom to be sung as in Rome. In the absence of written music, this may have caused some difficulty, since it would have had to be learned orally, as a folk music tradition. There survives another repertory of chant from Rome for the same liturgical texts, whose melodies are related to, though variants of, the Frankish "Gregorian" chant, rather as two different variants of 'the same' folk song. This repertory is known as "Old Roman", and is thought to be related to the Roman tradition from which cantors in the Frankish kingdom learned the Roman chant. This "Old Roman" version continued to be used in Rome for some centuries before being replaced by the "Frankish-Roman" or "Gregorian" version.

The Frankish chant is thought to have received the name "Gregorian" after one of the Popes of that name, in order to give it greater authority and to ease its reception in the Frankish kingdom. Surviving books which contain complete written repertories of the chant with music do not appear before the tenth century and are well established in the eleventh. Some of the earlier notations give rhythmic details, but most do not give exact pitches and must be used as an aide-mémoire in conjunction with a knowledge of the oral tradition. Pitch-defined manuscripts begin to appear in the eleventh century and are well-established by the twelfth. In these, the pitches can be read without a knowledge of the oral tradition, but the rhythmic details cease to be recorded.

CD2_The_Reign_of_Gregorian_Chant_256_vbr.part1.rar
CD2_The_Reign_of_Gregorian_Chant_256_vbr.part2.rar


CD 3 - The Age of Courtly Love
Around the beginning of the 12th century things were beginning to change rapidly all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Islam was on the rise, the Christian church was becoming a beaurocratic institution, towns were becoming an important part of life in Europe, and the 2nd and 3rd crusade would be undertaken before the end of the century. In Southern France troubadours appear, resuming a tradition that began in the 500s when secular entertainers were banished on the urging of Christian bishops. Since the seventh century Islamic Sufis had been travelling to non-Muslim towns and villages, singing love songs, telling stories and informing people about Islam. They were the original minstrels or troubadours. European minstrels or troubadours in the middle ages copied their practice from the Sufis after changing the 'Beloved' from God to women.

Thus a precious art emanates from this period: the earliest secular lyric poetry of the West which, with great charm, is devoted to the cult of love. Its peculiarity is that the poet creates not only the words but the music as well. The word "Troubadour" stems from the Provençal word 'trovar' which means "to invent". The Troubadour soon appeared all over Europe: in Northern France where he was called "Trouvère", in Germany where he was called "Minnesinger", and also in Italy and England. This inventive art is strictly separate from the polyphonic music which began to blossom at that time and in which the Troubadour was very seldom versed. The Troubadour did not perform his songs himself, but employed others called "Jongleurs" in Provençal, "Ménéstrel" in French, and "Minstrel" in English.

Bernart de Ventadour (Ventadorn) (c.1125 - 1195): Troubadour, born in Ventadorn. The son of a kitchen scullion, he served Eleanor of Aquitaine (for whom many of his best and most expressive songs were written) at the court of her husband, Henry II of England, and also Raimon of Toulouse, before entering the monastery where he ended his life. Few other troubadours left so many melodies which have survived; there are eighteen, and many of them became well known all over medieval Europe, some being given German texts by Minnesingers such as Friedrich von Hûsen and Dietmar von Aist. Some of his songs, including the especially famous 'Quan vei l'aloete', show the melodic influence of Gregorian chant.

Folquet de Marselh (Marseilles) (c.1155 - 1231): Troubadour, famed for having said that "a verse without music is a mill without water." The son of a merchant, he was brought up in Marseilles. His activity as a poet and musician covered the years 1179-93; in 1195 he and his wife and sons embraced the religious life and in 1201 he became Abbot of the Cistercian house at Toronet en Provence. He was Bishop of Toulouse from 1205 and founded the university there. His nineteen surviving poems reflect his great learning, being full of devices such as abstract metaphors and clever aphorisms; Dante esteemed him worthy of a place in Paradise. Thirteen of his melodies survive.

Alfonso X ("El Sabio") (1221- 1284): King of Castile and León (from 1252) and brother-in-law of Edward I of England. A patron of Castilian literature, historiography and the arts, he initiated the study of music at Salamanca University. Many troubadours found favor at his court, and it was here that the MS known as the Cantigas de Santa María comprising over 400 songs was compiled; Alfonso himself may have composed some of its melodies. It has been called "one of the greatest monuments of mediaeval music."

Neidhart von Reuental (c.1180 - 1237/46): Austrian Minnesinger, from an aristocratic but poor family. Went on a Crusade in 1217-19 before settling down in Austria. A younger contemporary of Walther von der Vogelweide, he is one of the earliest German poets some of whose poems survive complete with melodies - there are at least seventeen, and nearly forty more of his poems were given tunes that are unascribed and thought to be by his imitators. His songs show a fusion of court and folk music traditions; many of them celebrate seasons of the year or deal with the lives of peasants and farmers and their rustic jollifications. Their style is generally fresh, simple and popular; and they were so highly regarded as to survive into the era of music printing. In fact Neidhart was the only Minnesinger whose music was printed during the Renaissance.
Note: This is definitely one of my favourites; I wish I had more music by this guy!

Tannhäuser (c.1200 - 1266): Minnesinger, possibly born in the Oberpfalz region. He may have been of noble birth (the name Tannhäuser may be an alias) and was for a long time at the Vienna court. He participated in the Crusade of 1228-9. After the death of his patron, King Frederick, he spent some time as a wandering musician before settling at the court of Otto II of Bavaria. Only one of his melodies survives.

CD3_The_Age_of_Courtly_Love_256_vbr.part1.rar
CD3_The_Age_of_Courtly_Love_256_vbr.part2.rar

CD3_The_Age_of_Courtly_Love.rar (1 file, new upload)


CD 4 - The Birth of Polyphony
Also around the 12th century, particularly at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, sacred composers became restless with plainchant and started experimenting. They started by adding the same note an octave higher or lower to notes of the plainchant. This doesn't really change the harmony, but it adds a richer texture to it. Then, they started adding this additional voice to the plainchant at the interval of a perfect fifth or fourth instead of just at the octave. Hence, the birth of organum, the first form of polyphony. In "florid organum" the original tune would be sung in long notes while an accompanying voice would sing many notes to each one of the original, often in a highly elaborate fashion, all the while emphasising the perfect consonances (fourths, fifths and octaves) as in the earlier organa.

Once the concept of adding other notes to a plainchant was realised, there was no stopping the possibilities that the newly discovered concept of harmony would allow. From this evolution, the major scared forms of medieval music were created: the medieval motet and pieces composed for the various parts of the ordinary and proper mass. The idea of harmony quickly spread to secular music, erasing the line between the musically trained and untrained that religion usually drew. Many composers starting composing both sacred and secular works. By the fourteenth century, secular polyphony was produced by highly trained specialists in the art of music rather than by the aristocracy.

Surviving manuscripts from this era include the Codex Montpellier, Codex Bamberg, and the El Codex musical de Las Huelgas, with the Codex Montpellier probably being the most extensive collection of 13th century motets. Composers of this time include Léonin, Pérotin, W. de Wycombe, Adam de St. Victor, and Petrus de Cruce (Pierre de la Croix). Ever-increasing rhythmic complexity would be a fundamental characteristic of the 14th century, though music in France, Italy, and England would take quite different paths during that time.

The earliest known significant composer of polyphonic organum known to us by name is the composer Léonin (Leoninus). He was born in Paris in 1135 and died in approximately 1201. Probably, he was French and lived and worked in Paris at the Notre Dame Cathedral. He was the earliest member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony who is known by name. Leonin's compositions were based on the Gregorian chants. The original chant served as the foundation and a second voice, called the descant, was added to the original chant. This style came to be known as organum (example). All that is known about him comes from the writings of a later student at the cathedral known as "Anonymous IV", an Englishman who left a treatise on music theory. He mentions Léonin as the composer of the Magnus Liber, the "Great Book" of organum: a collection of organum with two-part settings of portions of the mass known as the Magnus Liber Organi (Magnus liber organi de graduali et antiphonario pro servitio divino multiplicando). Various revised, updated, and supplemented fonns of this collection survive in 13th century manuscripts. It was Léonin's incomparable achievement to introduce a rational system of rhythm into polyphonic music for the first time, and, equally important, to create a method of notation expressive of this rhythm. According to Anonymous IV, Léonin's work was greatly improved and expanded by the later composer Pérotin.

Notre Dame Organum is most important in that rhythm was introduced according to a system of rhythmic modes. Léonin began to use the rhythmic modes in his 2-part works (organum duplum). Modal rhythm was even more prominent in the 3-part works (organum triplum) of Pérotin. Polyphonic treatment was restricted to plainchants of the Graduals, Alleluias, Responsories, and the "Benedicamus Domino," but only the soloist sections were used for polyphonic treatment.

CD4_The_Birth_of_Polyphony_256_vbr.part1.rar
CD4_The_Birth_of_Polyphony_256_vbr.part2.rar


CD 5 - Ars Nova and the Fourteenth Century
Once the polyphonic innovations of the 12th and 13th centuries had been transformed into usable techniques, composers could concentrate on extracting the full potential of what had been learned. This process of consolidation and refinement was the task of the 14th century. Four major trends can be discerned: first, increasing secularization; second, the growing dominance of polyphony; third, the emergence of national idioms and forms; and fourth, an increasing preoccupation with musical technique.

Two treatises appearing in France around 1320 provided a name for this age in music, Philippe de Vitry's (1291-1361) Ars Nova ("New Art") and Ars novae musicae ("The Art of the New Music") by Jean de Muris (c.1295 - after 1351) . Modern scholars liked the term "Ars Nova" so much that they adopted it as a convenient catchphrase denoting 14th century polyphony; by extension the polyphony of the preceding century (some expand it to include the Notre Dame school) became the "Ars Antiqua". More specifically, "Ars Nova" refers to the music of 14th century France; the Italian counterpart is dubbed the "Trecento".

Vitry's fame rests primarily on his treatise Ars nova (ca. 1322-23), which established a new theory of mensural notation. Whereas virtually all metricised music prior to 1300 can be transcribed in the equivalent of modem-day 6/8, Vitry's innovations permitted four distinct meters: 6/8, 9/8, 2/4, and 3/4. Moreover, these could even be combined simultaneously. Individual note values, too, could be notated with a precision and variety previously impossible. Johannes (Jean) de Muris was a French theorist and teacher at the Sorbonne besides being a colleague of Philippe de Vitry and writer of many theoretical works.

CD5_Ars_Nova_And_the_Fourteenth_Century_256_vbr.part1.rar
CD5_Ars_Nova_And_the_Fourteenth_Century_256_vbr.part1.rar


CD 6 - The Dawn of the Renaissance (15th Century)
While Renaissance ideas were moving north from Italy, there was a simultaneous spread southward of innovation, particularly in music. The music of the 15th century Burgundian School defined the beginning of the Renaissance in that art; and the polyphony of the Netherlanders, as it moved with the musicians themselves into Italy, formed the core of what was the first true international style in music since the standardisation of Gregorian chant in the 9th century. The culmination of the Netherlandish school was in the music of the Italian composer, Palestrina.

The musical Renaissance is usually taken to begin with the generation of Gilles Binchois (c.1400-1460) and Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474), although most of the 15th century is placed in the medieval period by some historians. The main change which defines the musical Renaissance from about 1420 is the use of thirds as structural intervals, the accompanying concision of the musical lines, and the resulting path toward modern harmony. Binchois & Dufay were largely responsible for defining the new style of song-writing. This was the era in which liturgical music (the genres of mass and motet) began to get the upper hand in stylistic developments, especially in the music of Dufay. His music flows more smoothly than the characteristically complex rhythmic textures of the late medieval period, and is marked by graceful melodies and a compelling sense of direction. As his career progressed and his fame grew, Dufay increasingly took up the four-voice vocal texture which was to be characteristic of the early Renaissance as a whole. His four cantus firmus masses are landmarks in what was to become the dominant style of mass composition.

After Dufay, the next composer to project a significance beyond the Renaissance was Johannes Ockeghem (c.1410-1497). Ockeghem took the cyclic mass to new levels of complexity, and also pioneered a contrapuntal style in which bass voices were given greater independence. His style is marked by a careful handling of vocal ranges in a primarily four-voice texture, and an emphasis on complex and expressive bass lines. This emphasis on lower textures opened up a new world of structural possibilities for Renaissance composers, and Ockeghem's compositions exploit these potentials in a variety of ways. Today, Ockeghem is regarded not only as one of the pioneers of Western polyphony, but as one of the supreme masters of both lyrical and contrapuntal invention.

The last and most influential of the three composers who are now regarded as dominating the 15th century was Josquin Desprez (c.1455-1521). Josquin was the primary exponent of the new structural technique of pervasive imitation which was to have tremendous impact on western music. His compositions bridge the gap between the elaborate free counterpoint of the 15th century and the simpler syllabic declamation of the 16th. His motets are generally held to be his most individual and striking compositions, but his masses are also highly significant. His style is marked by the technique of pervasive imitation, in which different vocal lines share material in a subtle interlocking manner. Most of his compositions are for four voices, though larger textures are not uncommon. Josquin's motets contain some of his most varied and highly respected output, and it is here that his combination of piety, technical mastery, and individual discretion makes its surest showing.

Johannes Ciconia (c.1335 or c.1373-1412) was a late medieval composer and music theorist. All the composer's works are believed to date from later than about 1390. Ciconia's music shows a mingling of styles: music typical of northern Italy is combined with the French Ars Nova (and the more complex Ars Subtilitor), and the late Medieval style begins to morph into writing, which points towards the Renaissance. He wrote music both secular (French virelais, Italian ballate and madrigals) and sacred (motets, mass movements, some of them isorhythmic), and also penned treatises on music. It is possible that some works have been misattributed to him.

CD6_The_Dawn_of_the_Renaissance_256_vbr.part1.rar
CD6_The_Dawn_of_the_Renaissance_256_vbr.part2.rar

posted by Paxjorge @ Friday, April 07, 2006