Machaut...hooray...

[ardcarp]

Some early early music. Thank goodness.




Lucie Skeaping discovers the remarkable Guillaume de Machaut, as both poet and composer in 1300s France, in conversation with Machaut experts Elizabeth Eva Leach and Uri Smilansky.

With thanks to French Radio, Le Miroir de Musique, the Orlando Consort and Sollazzo Ensemble for making recordings available for this programme.

Why the BBC-speak? I think Machaut was 'discovered' a little before Lucie did! Even before a student consort sang his Mass in the 1960s...a wonderful experience of a work then seldom performed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qvs4

Going a bit off topic, and making some sort of apology to Lucie Skeaping, I was watching this programme om iPlayer earlier tonight:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074l34

The incidental music was composed by John Harle and included vocal contributions by Emma Kirkby and Lucie Skeaping. It is magical and atmospheric.
Unfortunately it is only heard from time to time during the programme, so don't judge it by the short opening bit.

[Cockney Sparrow]

.......................The incidental music was composed by John Harle and included vocal contributions by Emma Kirkby and Lucie Skeaping. It is magical and atmospheric.
Unfortunately it is only heard from time to time during the programme, so don't judge it by the short opening bit......

I have been (sporadically) re-watching the Schama series. Sorry, I don't have time to watch that episode again, but it might well be the re-working of the Three Ravens, which I sought out as it sounded so - yes :magical, atmospheric. It was available on an album "Terror and Magnificence" and I have found it on streaming services (I use YouTubeMusic) :

https://www.discogs.com/release/8051762-John-Harle-Featuring-Elvis-Costello-Sarah-Leonard-Andy-Sheppard-Terror-And-Magnificence

I believe the soprano singing in the stratosphere in Three Ravens was Sarah Leonard but you are correct that Kirkby and Skeaping do feature on the music for the series recorded for TV (however, they are not listed as contributors on the above CD).

The very opening of the programme, TV soundtrack, might well be Kirkby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpuJ2vW1cGc

[smittims]

The 'BBCSpeak' you refer to (and yes, I find it irritating too) is part of a long tradition of leading the listener into a subject by pretending the presenter knows as little as the man on the Clapham omnibus. On TV it's often done by a comedian trying to make a pot or fire a steam engine and, of course making a mess of it.

I remember Brian Kay saying (not about Machaut) 'I had to admit I hadn't heard of this composer before I saw this request', and my saying 'Oh, come off it, Brian; I'm sure you had.'

[AuntDaisy]

Catherine Bott "discovered" him even earlier, in 2011 (& 2009)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010623d

[Mandryka]

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.

Discover = make known

(Can someone identify the source of the quote?)

[french frank]

Catherine Bott "discovered" him even earlier, in 2011 (& 2009)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010623d

Ooh, thank you for that, Auntie. Jogged my memory that I "discovered" him - and Le voir dit - even earlier than that, so long ago I've forgotten the date, c.1972(?). Also found the complete text of the work online too

[AuntDaisy]

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
Discover = make known
(Can someone identify the source of the quote?)

Was it John Cleese in ISIRTA? Thinking of his You rip-a dese and I'll rip-a those contribution.

Happy to help FF - it's a shame that only 15mins of that 2011 EMS is on the BBC website.
As ardcap says, I wish they'd do more Early Early Music.

[gurnemanz]

Ooh, thank you for that, Auntie. Jogged my memory that I "discovered" him - and Le voir dit - even earlier than that, so long ago I've forgotten the date, c.1972(?). Also found the complete text of the work online too

My memory was jogged towards my "discovery" of Machaut via a perhaps unlikely source, an East German LP which I acquired in Berlin in the early 70s. Dietrich Knothe and his Capella Lipsiensis did some laudable pioneering work in the early music field in the 60s and 70s.

[RichardB]

a long tradition of leading the listener into a subject by pretending the presenter knows as little as the man on the Clapham omnibus

Extremely annoying. What's wrong with taking the attitude of "I find this so fascinating that I've put a lot of time and energy into learning all about it, let me share some of this knowledge and maybe you'll want to find out more for yourself".

It's very fortunate that so much of Machaut's work has survived, in comparison with many of his contemporaries, because it's such a beautiful and varied oeuvre.

If I may: go to 3:35 in this video

for an instrumental realisation of one of Machaut's four-part chansons which emphasises the in(ter)dependence between the voices.

[french frank]

Extremely annoying. What's wrong with taking the attitude of "I find this so fascinating that I've put a lot of time and energy into learning all about it, let me share some of this knowledge and maybe you'll want to find out more for yourself".

Yes, the 'authoritative' voice of R3 has been replaced by 'Let's go on a journey together to find out...'

If I may: go to 3:35 in this video

for an instrumental realisation of one of Machaut's four-part chansons which emphasises the in(ter)dependence between the voices.

Thank you for that link - and the music!

[Mandryka]

The think that helped me discover Machaut was the Hilliard recording of the motets. Those motets are, for me, the summit. I like the mass of course, but I find the motets more intriguing. And the Hilliard recording seems to me pretty well unsurpassed because of the way they make sense of the words: if you follow with the text, you see how they're expressing the meaning -- that seems to me the right approach. This sort of thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgPuekWVrjc&ab_channel=pelodelperro

[Joseph K]

Although it only features four Machaut pieces, I recommend this disk (one of about five disks of Gothic Voices I have) -

[Serial_Apologist]

I've long been fascinated by Machaut's music - particularly the unusual modes he built his compositions on with their odd diminished intervals, which make his music sound strangely "modern". Isn't one of the reasons his work has survived better than others contemporary with him because his was thoroughly notated, and theirs wasn't?

[Joseph K]

I've long been fascinated by Machaut's music - particularly the unusual modes he built his compositions on with their odd diminished intervals, which make his music sound strangely "modern". Isn't one of the reasons his work has survived better than others contemporary with him because his was thoroughly notated, and theirs wasn't?

I don't think it has to do with the way in which his music is notated - more than he was unusually punctilious in collecting and preserving the manuscripts that comprise his oeuvre, as though for posterity...

[RichardB]

I don't think it has to do with the way in which his music is notated - more than he was unusually punctilious in collecting and preserving the manuscripts that comprise his oeuvre, as though for posterity...

Indeed. Also he lived into his late 70s which must have been quite unusual in the 14th century.