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The Clerks' Group Sanctus: Sanans fragilia; Et verus homo; - Anon/Ivrea
Dame/Fins cuers doulz; Trop plus est bele/Biaute
paree de valour; Lasse!/Se j'aim mon loyal ami; Tu qui gregem/Plange,
regni respublica; Christe qui lux/Veni creator spiritus; Qui es
promesse/Ha! Fortune; Martyrum/Diligenter inquiramus; Amours/Faus
samblant - Machaut This excellent CD has been received after reviewing the concert of some of the same repertoire at Blackheath Halls. It is quite magnificent, superbly recorded and comprehensively documented, 44 pages complete with all the texts and background essays, all of it on line at Signum's model website and where you can listen to several tracks. So who needs more words from me? Instead, I allow myself just a word of reiteration about a hobby-horse of mine - clarity in booklets. On the Web everything is clear black-on-white, but in Jan Hart's Booklet design and typesetting the texts are printed palely on off-white background; artistic, yes, but it would all be far easier to read in strong black type, especially when necessarily small. The CD is otherwise unreservedly recommended. Peter Grahame Woolf Concert review: For a real novelty in the Sunday Mornings concert series at Blackheath Halls, the usual instrumental chamber music fare was varied with medieval vocal music given by four singers (the fifth had lost his voice the same morning). The Clerks' Group gave a fascinating recital of 14 C. music, interspersed with evocative readings by their director Edward Wickham from Froissart's Chronicles, extracts about The Great Schism (between Rome & Avignon) and Miracles in Wartime. The main composer was Guillaume de Machaut, with anonymous items from the Ivrea Manuscript. The news had spread somehow; people came from afar and there was a good house which may not have been anticipated - the programmes with words were sold out before we arrived! That was unfortunate, as this was a period of great musical complexity (not dissimilar to our own 1970s) in which elaborate counterpoint prevailed, and with a particular additional curiosity in that different texts, to our ears incompatible, were set simultaneously! Edward Wickham gave examples of motets in which, above a plainchant tenor, higher voices sung secular texts; one asked 'why does my husband beat me?', another dealt graphically with the cuckolding of a blacksmith, and a 'post missarum sollempnia' carried an injunction to tradesmen to conduct their lives morally. But it is even more important to tell that never can sounds of such ineffable beauty have been heard in the Recital Room; the voices were perfectly blended and acutely tuned, all enhanced by the barrel-vaulted room, an ideal acoustic to relish Lucy Ballard's solos and the concerted items with William Missin, Tom Raskin and Edward Wickham. Peter Grahame Woolf See also my recent review of The Clerks' Group's new Dufay CD, also warmly recommended.
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Guillaume
de Machaut: Motets, Mass music & songs by Machaut
from the Ivrea Codex