Machaut: Chansons

Even the Great Have Bad Ear Days

This is a re-release with different title of the Orlando Consort's "In a Pleasure Garden" CD of Machaut.

The Orlando Consort is Number One in my books - the very best vocal consort recording Renaissance and Medieval music today. Their CDs of John Dunstaple and Antoine Busnois set the gold standard for performance of polyphony. Thus I was quite excited when this recording was reissued. But the disappointment has been proportionate to the expectations.

A fatally flawed performance decision ruins this CD. These ballades, virelais, and rondos - not all merely chansons in a formal sense - are settings by Guillaume de Machaut of his own poetry. Machaut carefully "archived" his own works in a meticulous manuscript, for which reason we have more of his music than of any other 14th C composer. If any composer's 'intentions' should be respected, it is Machaut. Unfortunately, the Orlandos have chosen to sing the text only on one line of the three or four intertwining polyphonic parts. The other lines are vocalized on vowels. Even when sung in excellent tuning by beautiful voices, the result is a lot of hooting and swooping, totally without the rhythmic crunches of consonants that make Machaut lively. I'd be willing to take up a subscription to send the Orlandos back to the recording studio to do it right! September 26, 2008

Beautiful music from a forgotten master

I'm surprised no one has reviewed this yet. This is probably my favorite recording of Machaut's music, and one of my favorite recordings of any period. The performing these songs without any instrumental accompaniment, choosing instead to allow the other singers to vocalize the supporting parts, lend the pieces a homogeneous, yet constantly shifting texture -- at the risk of using a cliché, I would liken it to a gem that changes color as you turn it around in your hand.

Machaut is vastly underrated, which is all the more a pity as his songs have to be some of the greatest ever written. With the revival of interest in music pre-Bach, knowledge of this forgotten master is growing. Perhaps, one day, history books will place him, as I do, in the pantheon of the great composers.
June 14, 2008

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