Guillaume de Machaut (c1300-1377)
Remède de Fortune
The Orlando Consort
rec. 2021, St John the Baptist, Loughton, Essex, UK
Texts and Translations included in booklet
Reviewed as 16/44 FLAC download
Hyperion CDA68399 [72]

Next month, Hyperion will release the eleventh and final CD of the Orlando Consort’s monumental survey of the works of Guillaume de Machaut. It will also be the last release from this legendary early music group who disbanded in the summer of 2023.

The series for Hyperion began with the recording of Le voir dit in 2012 and most of the records were covered by reviewers here at MWI. In anticipation of the new disc, I consulted the website and found that the last release in the series reviewed was the eighth CD, The Lion of Nobility, released in January 2021 (review ~ review). Subsequent records were two: Remède de Fortune and The Fount of Grace, which seem not to have been reviewed here. My project over the next few weeks, then, will be to appraise these two missing releases prior to a review of the last record A Lover’s Death in January 2025.

Machaut is now rightly considered a giant in the history of western music. He lived a long life and worked diligently. We are lucky that he had a real interest in book-making, meaning that much of his output in poetry and music survives to this day. He served as a kind of secretary to various famous men and women of the fourteenth century, not least King John the Blind of Bohemia, who we will remember from Froissart’s Chronicles, was led into battle at Crécy tied by reins to his attendants to strike at least one blow against the enemy before being cut down in the glorious English victory.

We think that Machaut’s Remède de Fortune dates from around 1345 so one year before Crécy. It is a (very) long narrative poem one of only two dits amoureux into which Machaut interpolated musical settings. As usual with Machaut, it is on the topic of courtly love, the experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment so beloved of the Troubadours and Trouvères of which Machaut is a natural successor. The tale is a coming-of-age story of the emotional life of a young man in love. It is modelled on Boethius’ On the Consolation of Philosophy (523 CE) a famous example of prison literature, in which Boethius is visited in his cell by Lady Philosophy who instructs him on how to regain his emotional and intellectual composure. Machaut adapts the feminine vision to Lady Fortune who spins her wheel of fortune and dispenses life’s ups and downs without bias or favour to all. How to be happy and love gently persevering through trials is the lesson. She uses the method of Socrates to question and provoke the lover into the realisation that he controls only transient things and he should accept life’s journey for what it is – pure fortune.

In reviewing the Orlando Consort record, I compared recordings by Marc Mauillon with Pierre Hamon on Eloquentia (complete on 2 CDs) and most notably the more recent Blue Heron performance reviewed so brilliantly by Gary Higginson in 2023. I can do no better than refer readers to the second paragraph in his review where he offers a great synopsis on Remède de Fortune. Incidentally, I am very jealous of anyone who has that Blue Heron set. As you will read, I consider it to be an amazing record and it sounds as if the physical product containing the illustrations from Machaut MS C is a treasure. Alas, I possess only the download but musically it is a pearl of great prize.

The music for Remède de Fortune (RF) is in seven parts. We begin with the Lay (RF1) long and intricate and monophonic. The Orlando Consort give us all twelve stanzas of the Lay. The piece is virtuosic and has an incredible range so three singers are employed: Donald Greig (baritone) with the first three strophes, Angus Smith (tenor) with the next four and finally Mark Dobell (tenor) in the higher pitched lines of the last five stanzas.

After reading his Lay to the lady and her subsequent enquiry as to its authorship our lover, distraught, retires dumbstruck, mortified and in an altogether desperate state to begin the Complainte (RF2). In contrast to the invention of the Lay this is musically much more static and monotonous. In a full performance we would hear 36 stanzas of what might be described as teen angst in the same rhyme and metre. Mercifully we get an edited version of 15 parts but it is quite enough to get the feel of it all as our lover wallows in grief. Mark Dobell’s tenor is employed alone in the Complainte and his accomplishment has been described as “heroic” (David Fallows in Gramophone).

In RF3 we come to the Chant Royale, Machaut’s only example of this form. Countertenor Matthew Venner is wonderful as he sings Joye, plaisance. This hymn to love has the same effect on our poor soul as I imagine St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians had on the same subject (I do not intend to be blasphemous here and indeed consider Paul’s letter and his writings generally to be beyond compare in beauty, eclipsing anything by Machaut).

So having discussed the first three parts of the work potential buyers need to be aware that in this record of Remède you will be hearing nearly 50 minutes of unaccompanied monophonic singing before we get to any polyphony. This is not the fault of the Orlando Consort but their pure approach to the text and musical line without accompaniment does need to be discussed.

Here let me bring in the Blue Heron record made in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2019. In their abridged Remède they offer us 8 verses of the Lay, 4 of the Complainte and the Chant Royale. This is interspersed with other polyphonic and instrumental Machaut from other sources and importantly is accompanied throughout by subtle and in my opinion appropriate contributions from lute, harp, fiddle and even hurdy-gurdy. Both Gothic Voices and the Orlando Consort have been consistent in their espousal of the pure naked approach and they are academically right. Machaut wrote no accompanying music but Blue Heron and many European groups have added it and I have to say when we are faced with this much monody, it is hard not to be convinced by both arguments. The Complainte in particular, in its monotonous tread, is surely ripe for a drone type accompaniment which, as the notes to the Blue Heron record say, also alludes to the inexorable turning of fortune’s wheel.

Martin Near countertenor for Blue Heron is sweet-toned and characterful in Joye, plaisance and Jason McStoots is suitably desperate in the Complainte. It is, as I have already hinted, a wonderful account of the work to compare with the Orlando Consort’s newer version. Earlier in 2008, baritone Marc Mauillon recorded Remède with an ensemble directed by Pierre Hamon. This version is also well worth hearing. Mauillon is such a sensitive artist. His versatile gentle voice particularly lovely in quieter more hushed passages is a great success in Machaut. Their judicious use of instruments is also very convincing.

After the Chant Royale we hear polyphony at last and the glory of the Ars Nova. Only one vocal line is assigned text while other voices are singing notes on specific syllables, singing the hiccup if you like. RF4 is a four part Balladelle En amer a douce vie. The Orlando Consort are wonderful in ensemble here. There is a purity and beauty to the tone and the sound picture Hyperion give them blooms with colour and life. The Ballade RF5 is heard in two versions. Firstly a 2vv performance with Mark Dobell intoning the text and Donald Greig underneath. Later the 4vv edition repeats the idea but with added triplum and contra tenor parts above enriching the piece markedly.

After a lively Virelai RF6 Machaut’s Remède de Fortune ends with another forme fixe the Rondeau Dame, mon cuer en vous remaint RF7. All is well in the courtly garden of love and we all depart contented. With these final polyphonic tracks the Orlando Consort remind us of their excellence and once again we are astonished by Machaut’s stature and importance. This music is nearly 700 years old and still touches us and amazes us. 

Before leaving this disc I want to remind readers of an earlier Hyperion record I am sure I will refer to again over the next couple of weeks as I return to the Machaut cycle from these artists. It is now over forty years since Gothic Voices recorded their epoch album The Mirror of Narcissus. The record begins with Ballade RF7. If like me you discovered Machaut with this record it will be hard for you to erase the feelings one has for this performance. Gothic Voices employed Emily van Evera’s angelic soprano and Margaret Philpot’s gentle mezzo alongside tenors Rogers Covey-Crump and Andrew King. I urge readers to hear this disc as it was and probably always will be my recommendation for anyone who wants to hear Machaut for the first time. Of course, the record also has Emma Kirkby in the Virelai RF6. Incomparable! (I am sure Donald Greig of the Orlando Consort will not mind me saying that).

I really enjoyed returning to this version of Remède de Fortune after a year or so and I look forward to reviewing the next record in a week or so. Going back to my reference to Crécy earlier, here’s an idea for any history lover like me. Why not make a date with your armchair, your CD player, order one of Jonathan Sumption’s volumes of The Hundred Years War series or perhaps W. Mark Ormrod’s Edward III pour yourself a glass of red wine and spend the evening in the fourteenth century with Machaut’s singers for accompaniment? If that is your idea of a great night what are you waiting for?

Philip Harrison

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Contents
Qui n’aroit autre deport
Tieus rit au main            
Joye, plaisance
En amer a douce vie
Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient (2vv)
Dame, a vous sans retollir
Dame, mon cuer en vous remaint
Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient (4vv)