Extract

It is difficult for us to imagine what late medieval courtly society and its music would have looked like without the influence of France—something which is reflected in the Middle English term ‘Freynshe fare’ (meaning, amongst other things, the enchanting effects of courtly eloquence) alongside Middle High German and Italian descriptions of cultivated learning and music-making ‘according to French customs’ (‘nach welschen sitten’) or ‘in the French manner’ (‘a la francesca’). Starting with the lyric output of the troubadours and trouvères and their German Minnesänger counterparts, the current set of CDs then progresses towards the significant figure of Guillaume de Machaut and concludes with music by his late 14th-century French and Italian contemporaries. Alongside the ubiquitous topic of courtly love in all its various refractions, a secondary, subtler theme of birds, animals and other creatures emerges across five out of these six releases—a reminder that natura was omnipresent in the medieval earthly experience and also that music theorists considered the ‘natural’ instrument of the voice to be superior to ‘artificial’ instruments.

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