Guillaume de Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut's songs of courtly love sit at the heart of fourteenth-century French music: virelais, ballades and rondeaux where longing, grace and intricate rhyme meet the rhythmic daring of the ars nova.
He wrote across the formes fixes with a poet's ear and a composer's craft, setting French texts of service, pleasure and pain against lines that can turn syllabic or bloom into long melismas. Motets often braid sacred Latin tenors with secular upper voices; the Messe de Nostre Dame stands as the earliest complete Ordinary by a single hand, conceived as a whole. On these recordings his pieces surface among troubadour song, dance and later lute airs: Douce dame jolie, Se je souspir, Quant je sui mis, Tres douce dame, the lai Tels rit au main. The music carries colour and bite without museum dust, still speaking of love's hold and release.
Compositions by Guillaume de Machaut appear on
Old Wine, New Bottles
This disc by Floyd Williams & JANUS illustrates the cross fertilisation of folk/popular and jazz genres that occur in classical music. The original premise was to play early music (14th - 16th centuries) on modern instruments without regard for any historian's "purist" concerns.
Travellers' Tapestry
Mediæval and folk-based music from Europe, Asia and the Middle East – inspired by the centres of barter and exchange grouped along busy trade routes.
Silk and Spice
Early instrumental music inspired by the Silk Road. Cantigas takes us on a musical journey through mediæval Europe, Asia and the Middle East, where the meeting of diverse cultures resulted in an interaction and exchange of musical ideas.
Joy
'Joy' refers to the intent and inspiration that underlies so much of the music on this disc - and it gives us an appreciation of how music formed the backdrop to people's lives in the Middle Ages.
Falling Through Time
All the colour and mystique of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance come alive with a presentation that is rich in music and drama.