The Fount of Grace
Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377)
The Orlando Consort
rec. 2022, St John the Baptist, Loughton, Essex, UK
Texts and translations included in booklet
Reviewed as a 16/44 FLAC download
Hyperion CDA68417 [63]
At the Council of Ephesus in 431, bishops declared Mary Theotokos, God-bearer, Mother of God. Devotion to her has always been important in Christianity. On the cross, Jesus said, “Behold, your mother” and her position in heaven as intercessor to her son has been a comfort to millions for nearly two thousand years. Her many titles include the name of this CD, The Fount of Grace. The program includes a Lay to the Blessed Virgin and three Marian Motets as well as a good range of other works.
This record is the penultimate release in The Orlando Consort’s soon-to-be-completed survey of Machaut’s works. Last week I reviewed Remède de Fortune and next I will turn finally to A Lover’s Death. This legendary early music group gave their last concert at the Boston Early Music Festival in June 2023 so these final records marked their swan song.
Considering its vintage, we are lucky to have such a corpus of work authentically by Machaut but as I mentioned in my last review his skills in bookbinding allied to his employment in some of the best environs in France at the time has ensured its survival. The times he lived in were turbulent indeed and it is this context that the current recording is to be viewed.
Let us begin at the beginning of the fourteenth century and the birth of young Guillaume. He would have been barely into his teens when the Little Ice Age hit Europe. Record low temperatures coupled with intense rainfall caused massive crop failures and devastating floods. France was at the epicentre of this environmental disaster and thousands upon thousands suffered in a great famine.
In his 40s Machaut was employed in the court of John I Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia. He would have been based in the Ardennes region at this time although we know he also accompanied John in his many trips around Europe. In 1348 the Black Death hit Northern Europe. This bubonic plague had originated in the East two years earlier and unlike the Justinian plague of the 540s it was airborne. Some historians reckon that up to half of the European population died. We know half of Paris’ 100,000 inhabitants definitely perished. As with the great famine, France suffered perhaps the cruellest blow.
As if all these disasters weren’t enough, France was also suffering from the so-called Hundred Years’ War. Edward III, enforcing his claim to the French throne (Honi soit qui mal y pense), had refused to pay homage for his Duchy in Aquitaine and as a result the French King Philip VI had confiscated Gascony. King Edward with his sixteen year old son Edward the Black Prince had won a glorious victory at Crécy in 1346 and after a lull in the fighting due to the Black Death, had returned to harass Gascony in 1355. Historians know this as the Chevauchée. The English under the Black Prince terrorised the French and generally wrought havoc in the region. The French had to retaliate and did so at Poitiers in 1356. What looked like it would be a French victory at last, was again turned into another English triumph thanks to those longbowmen and some canny flanking movements in the battle plan.
I hope readers will forgive me this diversion. I do love my history but the narrative is important in understanding why Machaut felt the need to write this music beseeching the Queen of Heaven to listen and to plead with God to deliver France from its misery. They certainly had plenty to be miserable about and as usual in times of strife some people feeling God was punishing them went to extremes. Troops of Flagellants marching across the countryside indulging in public displays of penance were as common as soldiers. Mercifully for us Machaut’s exertions are easier on the ear.
The longest piece on the record is the Lay de la fonteinne, the title track as it were. This is one of only four partly polyphonic Lays by Machaut (he writes the polyphony in rubrics in this Lay). When I say “partly”, I mean that of the twelve stanzas, six are sung by a solo singer whilst six by three singers in canon. The verses alternate and we have the variety of Donald Greig, Angus Smith and Mark Dobell in two solos each. The Lay is the oldest form that Machaut writes in and his nineteen examples mark the final flowering of that tradition of setting music. In this wonderful hypnotic work, a lover appeals to the Blessed Mother confident she will not withhold her love as her more earthly sisters so often do. He extols her virtues, her immaculate conception and her fiat. Our lover then begins a lengthy praise to the Trinity that might not be strictly canonical (although the music often is; sorry, I couldn’t resist that pun). He sets out his vision of the Trinity as water in a fountain linking God the Father to the source, God the Son as the fountain itself and God the Holy Spirit to the stream flowing from it. I am not sure if Machaut was ever actually ordained but he definitely held several ecclesiastical offices notably in Reims so I have no reason to suspect heresy here in this original text.
I have compared The Orlando Consort in L16 to two excellent versions I have. The Hilliard Ensemble recorded it in 1989 for Hyperion. Mark Padmore leads the group of tenors that include Rogers Covey-Crump and John Potter in the even-numbered stanzas. They sing at a higher pitch than The Orlando Consort and the acoustic is much more reverberant and resonant. Six years earlier L’Oiseau-Lyre released an LP containing two polyphonic Lays including this one. I think you might still be able to get it on CD, too; indeed, I have seen a 50 CD box called Medieval and Renaissance from Decca that is absolutely mouth-watering in its contents and has the Machaut in it. This older account is attributed to The Medieval Ensemble of London but in this Lay the three singers are unaccompanied and include the marvellous Rogers Covey-Crump supported by Paul Elliott and Andrew King. There are differences in all three versions including whether the singers have text or intone in the polyphony and when to end i.e. whether each voice reaches the end of the text in turn or they all end in unison. The older L’Oiseau-Lyre record has each 3vv stanza ending in polyphony whilst the newer versions do not. It is not a big deal but readers may be interested in these differences.
I do have an attachment to the crisp Medieval Ensemble of London version and the freshness of the sound. You might say the performance ebbs along shimmering and sparkling akin to the water pouring forth from a fountain. The Orlando Consort are less youthful of tone, perhaps, but they expressively convey the text convincingly and the sonics are excellent. They also pick up the pace of the piece especially in the canonic passages; indeed their version of Lay de la fonteinne is despatched in 24 minutes to the Medieval Ensemble of London’s 27.
The Lay is a perfect example of Machaut’s ability to intermingle the Ars Antiqua with the Ars Nova. They are neglected in Machaut oeuvre and I was glad to return to this one. The Motet was a form that had potential for development. Philippe de Vitry and Machaut were instrumental in this and The Orlando Consort give us three examples of Machaut’s late style in this genre. All three pieces are masterworks in four parts. They all have introits and have the tenor and contratenor in expansive imposing slower moving music whilst the higher motetus and triplum lines are more complex and rhythmically diverse.
After the defeat at Poitiers there was a kind of Peasants’ Revolt in France. This was over twenty years before the famous English one we studied at school involving Wat Tyler and accomplices. The deprivations of the war the effects of the plague and the catastrophic leadership of the country were the reasons and it was around this time in 1358/9 that Machaut wrote these Motets. Interestingly, Machaut was in Reims at the time of the Black Prince’s siege of the city and actually served time on sentry duty atop the city walls.
M21 is an amazing work. The common people cry in despair just as the captured Jews did in Babylon. Their lot is terrible and they are wretched. This is an isorhythmic motet and the quality is fine. Mark Venner leads us off in triplum followed by Mark Dobell in motetus. These two younger members of the group are joined by the grounded foundation provided by founder members Angus Smith and Donald Greig. We can compare with the Hilliard Ensemble of 2001 recorded in a very reverberant venue in Switzerland for the ECM label. To my ears The Orlando Consort win hands-down. The sound Hyperion provide is natural and allows us to hear the polyphony in much clearer detail than the ECM disc of Machaut’s Motets. The Orlando Consort adapt a more vigorous pace, too, which I think suits the music more appropriately.
M22 is a more direct appeal for leadership and political unity, for a common approach to dealing with these dastardly Englishmen. Machaut’s text may include coded phrases those in power would recognise as an appeal for the Dauphin, who was regent for the imprisoned King John the Good, to really step it up and show his mettle. Again, The Orlando Consort are lively and crisp in comparison with the statelier yet purer of tone Hilliard Ensemble.
Machaut’s final motet is another model of the form and a great example of his contrapuntal genius. We English are referred to here as “a people of great wealth”! The text appeals to The Fount of Grace as before insistently yet with beauty. It was with this motet that Gothic Voices ended their Mirror of Narcissus record in 1983. If you read my review of Remède de Fortune last week you will know my opinion of that disc. In M23 Gothic Voices employed the lovely Margaret Philpot on the Triplum line and Rogers Covey-Crump in motetus. It is a model example of their art and is for me peerless.
As well as the Lay and the Motets The Orlando Consort present two Ballades, a Rondeau in two versions and two Virelais making this CD a pretty good survey of the main forms in which Machaut composed. These last three formes fixes were the most popular way of setting French love poetry of which I hope I have already established Machaut was a master. In the running order of the disc the Ballade 26 Donnez, signeurs comes first. It is a 3vv example and countertenor Matthew Venner is ethereal. It is a touching way to start the program; incidentally, the lyrics are not focussed so much on courtly love as an appeal to affluent donors to be a little more generous! I suppose we all have to eat and pay the bills, don’t we? The Ballade 24 Tres douce dame que j’aour is swoony in Machaut’s own inimitable style. It is in only two parts and its tenderness in this outing is charming.
The Rondeau is Tant doucement me sens emprisonnez R9. This exists in two versions and The Orlando Consort present both. In the earlier 2vv with cantus and tenor we have Mark Dobell and Donald Greig. At the end of the CD we also hear the 4vv with a higher voice added to the upper register (triplum) and one to the lower (contratenor). At school, I studied German so I am not really equipped to enjoy the linguistic ambiguities Machaut plays with in the similar sounding French words, but Francophones will almost certainly enjoy it.
Finally, we have two of Machaut’s 33 Virelais. These simpler settings are in three stanzas. V11 is a super way of experiencing the elegant fluency and clarity of Mark Dobell’s tenor. He is unaccompanied here in this greeting to a worthy lady. V24 is written in two parts. This time Angus Smith describes the desire and fear his love causes him. It sounds all-consuming. (Thankfully, my own wife never provoked those feelings in me – God bless her!) Smith has the companionship in this Virelai of the very reliable Donald Greig.
So disc 10 in The Orlando Consort’s brilliant Machaut edition is undoubtedly a success. As a Catholic, I obviously find the theme of the disc appealing. Mary conceived without sin, in her purity makes us feel close to her; as life’s experience teaches us, it is sin which divides and grace which unites. Machaut’s audience in the fourteenth century would also have believed this fervently. This music, though, some of it nearly 700 years old, can be enjoyed whatever your beliefs. I hope I have shown that in this review. I am going to have a week or so now enjoying music of a more recent time. Too much early music can make one a little dizzy and I need all my balance and co-ordination to return next time for the final release in the series, A Lover’s Death. Until then…
Philip Harrison
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Contents
Donnez, signeurs
Tu qui gregem / Plange regni / Apprehende arma
Tant doucement me sens emprisonnez (2vv)
Felix virgo / Inviolata genitrix / Ad te suspiramus
Hé, dame de valour
Tres douce dame
Je ne cesse de prier ‘Le lay de la fonteinne’
Christe qui lux / Veni creator spiritus / Tribulatio proxima est
En mon cuer a un descort
Tant doucement me sens emprisonnez (4vv)
