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Release Date: 12/14/2009
Run Time: 62:30
Helios is the subsidiary of Hyperion that reactivates its full-price catalog titles that have been unavailable for a while. The Spirits of England and France is the first volume in a series of five recorded by Christopher Page's group Gothic Voices, and throughout the series as a whole there are some splendid performances of work drawn from the vast canon of unaccompanied medieval vocal music. The idea behind the series was to contrast examples drawn from the ample extant French medieval literature with the more scant English variety, and overall it demonstrates that Franco-Flemish musical practice had more in common with the English than to other music-producing cultures during this era, even as England and France were continually warring with one another.
This first volume, subtitled "Music for Court and Church from the Later Middle Ages," is an odd mixture of various things and may represent Gothic Voices getting their feet wet in this concept. Among the most notable successes here are the four monophonic pieces on the program, sung by Andrew Tusa, Paul Agnew, Julian Podger, and Leigh Nixon, respectively; all of these are beautifully done. Nixon ably sings the conductus "In Rama sonat gemitus," a sad piece dating from 1160, which laments the exile of soon-to-be-martyred canon Thomas à Becket. Standouts found among polyphonic offerings, which naturally dominate the proceedings, include a beautiful, hushed thirteenth century setting of the Ave Maria and the weird, but affecting virelai Laus detur multipharia. The author of this last named work is given in its source as "Petrus Fabri"; nevertheless, Gothic Voices has decided to drop the attribution in favor of "Anonymous." This is one rather disconcerting aspect of The Spirits of England and France; despite the album's being assembled into two distinct programs -- "The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries" and "The twelfth and thirteenth centuries" -- the notes are inconsistent in covering what the sources of these pieces are. One would love to know more about the Anonymous Credo here, with its uncommonly long "Amen" section at the end, but the only thing one can deduce about it is that it's from the "fourteenth or fifteenth century" -- we aren't even informed if it's English or French (it's from the Old Hall Manuscript, folks.) The large blank spot on page 10 of the booklet looks like it would have accommodated some listings for sources, but perhaps for good reason Hyperion is deliberately avoiding including such information.
There are some wrong turns, most unpleasantly in "Presul nostri temporis," a work from the School of Perotin sung with nasal-sounding French vowel sounds -- English choirs are not known for their prowess in attempting to sing in imagined medieval French dialects. However, Page is a renowned philologist in addition to being a musician; one must assume that there is some historic basis for such treatment. Pavlo Beznosiuk is heard playing the medieval fiddle in three estampie, presumably included to break up this otherwise all-vocal program. While the tunes are pleasant, they sound strange without their percussion, drones, and other devices commonly used to flesh out medieval dances. Page, in his notes, makes the point that estampie are not dances at all, but that "the appeal of such pieces lay, in part, in the way they commanded the attention of anyone who wished to follow their intricate form." Uh, okay.
Nevertheless, the moments that are good in this collection are very good indeed -- of the five volumes Hyperion issued in The Spirits of England and France series, this one was probably the weakest overall.
Release Date: 12/14/2009
Run Time: 62:30
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