Messe de Notre Dame (Guillaume de Machaut)/ Ensemble Organum (Marcel Peres)
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CD Details
Orchestra: Gregorian ChantEdition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 1997-01-10
Music Label: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
Soundtracks:
- Intro?t: Suscepimus Deus misericordiam tuam
- Kyrie
- Gloria
- Graduel: Suscepimus Deus misericordiam tuam
- Alleluia: Adorabo ad templum sanctum
- Credo
- Offertoire: Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis
- Pr?face: Vere dignum et justum est
- Sanctus
- Agnus Dei
- Communion: Responsum accepit Symeon
- Ite Missa est - Deo gratias
Music reviews of Messe de Notre Dame (Guillaume de Machaut)/ Ensemble Organum (Marcel Peres)
Music Review: No, friends, it isn't plausible.
Rating: 3 Stars
The long review by Christopher Forbes above makes a very good case for taking this performance at face value in terms of scholarship, but certain facts are asserted as proven that are in fact quite in question. The influence of North African (Islamic? Arabic? Moorish?) music on Medieval Europe, for instance. Most people who argue this case seem to me to project modern Arabic music backwards 1200 years in time and assume that it sounded much the same; really we have no idea how it sounded. The North African origin of the bowed string instruments that became the vielle, viol, and violin is also very uncertain; much has been made of peg-boxes versus peg-disks, and as good a case can be made for a Nordic ancestry of the vielle as for a Moorish.
But big problem, however, with Ensemble Organum's hyper-ornamentation is that it makes no sense in terms of the developments of ars nova notation and contemporary treatments (in words and notes) of prolation. How could you get from Machaut a la Peres to Ars Subtilior composers like Ciconia, let alone Dufay and Ockeghem? And are we to believe that France was more Islamicized than Italy, half of which had been under North African rule for centuries before the Normans? Why would the trecento Italian composers like Landini be so obviously on a different course?
Okay, forgetting my musicological doubts, I have to say I find this version of Machaut less interesting than some other reviewers, and less listenable than the Hilliard's or other performances. There are bits I like and bits I loathe, but on the whole I sense some compulsion to "get spiritual" with the music, as if it weren't deep enough on its own terms. I have thoroughly enjoyed and respected other recordings by Marcel Peres -- the Josquin Pange Lingua, for example, and the Chantilly Codex CD -- but this Nostre Dame, judged just as music, is not to my taste.
Description of Messe de Notre Dame (Guillaume de Machaut)/ Ensemble Organum (Marcel Peres)
Although Machaut's oft-recorded Mass is probably the best known work of medieval music, Marcel P?r?s and his Ensemble Organum make you literally hear it for the first time. For starters, the movements are performed in a liturgical context, with appropriate plainsong insertions. The vocal lines, in turn, are ornamented with boisterous scoops, Bob Dylan-like slides, and decorations that will sound strange to modern ears. Yet the ornaments illuminate the work's celebratory aspects, and brings Machaut's quirky imagination into firmer focus than more conservative recordings. P?r?s is to Machaut as Schnabel was to Beethoven. --Jed DistlerMachaut's mass is one of the great masterpieces of the Middle Ages. Machaut was a man of many talents whose music represents a point of momentous transition from medieval practice to the emerging Renaissance. This four-voice work, the earliest of its kind by a known composer, is difficult to perform, not because of the notes, but because of questions concerning interpretation of the notation. You'll notice striking differences between Ensemble Organum's performance and every other available version. This group, known for its meticulous scholarship and performance perfectionism, sings in a style that sacrifices modern ideas about vocal purity and beauty in favor of what they believe to be a more authentic 14th-century style. This involves lots of micro-tonal slides and numerous fluttering, nervous ornaments, often done by more than one voice at a time, and a sort of "pushed" vocal quality that some listeners may find strange. Strange, maybe, but it's unique and it's convincing. --David Vernier
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