Guillaume Dufay

[Mandryka]

I want to recommend this presentation of L'Homme Armé mass by Les Jeunes Solistes, a small male voice ensemble.

Small forces (2 on a part I think), voices only; quite intimate - it doesn't sound like music for a grand occasion like a coronation or anything like that; a great sense of moving the music forward; the timbres of each voice very clear - so not blended, well balanced - certainly not dominated by higher voices; a friend of mine tells me that all the accidentals in the score are applied, with no additional musica ficta. This is a frequently recorded mass, and I think I've heard them all; this and Oxford Camerata are my favourites, and the two complement each other in an interesting way.

The mass is presented with music by Thierry Pécou. There are short and anodine pieces which provide "interludes" to the mass movements, and a much more interesting Homme Armé cantata at the end.

I've had the recording for years, its on Spotify now.

[Mandryka]

The first thing to say about this release from Gothic Voices is that it's very good. It's a good concert of good songs, I found myself unable to stop listening to it, all of it, and usually I have a shorter attention span. Of course part of it is that I was in the mood, and it's a while since I listened to this music so it sounded fresh and like revisiting an old friend. And part of it is maybe that their choice of songs is particularly accessible. But I'm sure the interpretations have something to do with it too.

Claire Wilkinson has a voice which is my sort of thing, and for me makes a magnificent contribution here - all the singing is up my alley,  and in the isorhythmic numbers they sing as a team.

Gone are the old days of Gothic Voices using vocalise for untexted music in songs, now they use instruments. I'm fine about that. I'd also say that they're just a smidgen more relaxed than they were, a smidgen more sensual, a lot more visceral. I'm fine about that too.

One of the most striking things about the recording is the sound quality, it's really fabulous, holographic.

There was a magic to some of the older recordings, I'd catch myself just amazed at the intensity of it, and the inwardness and sense of meaning. That hasn't happened to me here yet. It's a performance here, more than an expression of something felt. But this is all subjective and I don't want to draw any conclusions about quality.

One particularly interesting thing to do is compare their two versions of  Je requier à tous amoureux, one here and one on The Medieval Romantics. The one here is with harp, the other is with the untexted voice given over to vocalise. One is more intense and driven, the other more intimate and languid. One is more interesting contrapuntally, the other more interesting melodically.  I refuse to rank these performances. Refuse. 

The booklet is not very inspiring. We have the text translated and a journalistic essay describing the CDs concept - an imaginary wedding.

There used to be very little Dufay by Gothic Voices on record: je ne dors on The Castle of Fair Welcome, Je requier à tous amoureux and Las que je ferai? on The Medieval Romantics; Quel front signorille in paradiso on A Song for Francesca; J'attendrai tant qu'il vous plaira, mon cœur me fait tout dit penser and les bons vins de lanay on The Garden of Zephyrus. So it's very nice to have this CD.

[San Antone]

Claire Wilkinson has a voice which is my sort of thing

Mine too.  I also have her singing the "Pie Jesu" in the Durufle Requiem which is one of the best performances I have heard.

[Mandryka]

A interesting recording of the 4 part isorhytmic motet Nuper Rosarum Flores by a group called The Song Company, specially recorded for this project (which is exploring the impact of buildings on what music sounds like) The music was written for the  consecration of the Florence cathedral, so is genuinely site specific. Recorded in Australia unfortunately.

[Mandryka]

This recording contains no less that five renditions of one song, Ce jour de l'an -- it's about how someone wishes to have a good year so that, on New Year's Day, he can be smiley. Just maybe the progression of these interpretations on the CD is a metaphor for how Gothic Voices' style is changing. Or maybe I've gone medieval and I'm seeing allegory everywhere.

The first is a single man's voice unaccompanied, just like they might have done under Christopher Page years ago. The second is a tender, expressive and languid transcription for a bowed instrument, which straight away makes you realise that it's a crying shame not to play more early music transcriptions on bowed instruments. The third is a cheerful and almost polyphonic transcription for harp. Yes, we've moved away from monophony. The fourth is is for ensemble without voice -- it's got a strong pulse and you could imagine it as being a used for dancing.

And then the crowning glory -- a setting for two contrasting voices and a whole range of exotic sounding instruments, a performance which, if I heard it blind, I would have said had René Clemencic at the helm!

[Mandryka]

How do Gothic Voices now compare with Gothic Voices under Christopher Page? The answer is complex I think. Let's see how they do in Dufay.

They recorded three songs by Dufay on two recordings -- in 1991 under Christopher Page in The Medieval Romantics, and without his guidance in 2018 in The Dufay Spectacle



Je requier a tous amoureux is about a someone who's pretty annoyed because her lover won't call her "my love." In 1991 they rip through the song in a rigid way, the sole expressive embellishment is dynamic change; in 2018 it is much more fluid and tender, the modal rhythms are hardly palpable at all. It's interesting compare the two versions in this pair lines, where the lady expresses her plight

A ce jour de l'an gracieux
Me treuve de celle partye

In 1991 they accompany with vocalise, in 2018 they use some sort of plucked sounding thing. Which is better? Well the 1991 has the potential to be better I think, if some sort of rapport could be created with the vocalise and the poem. But no, it's just rather intrusive IMO, with no poetic/ rhetorical advantage as far as I can see.


Las, que [feray? ne que je devenray? is a poignant tale of an abandoned unconsoled lover. In 2018 it's sung wonderfully expressively with vocalise. In 1991 we get a rather trivial transcription for harp, what's the point of that?

Quel fronte signorille in paradiso is a poem in praise of the beloved's noble forehead and eyes, ending with the rather nice sentiment that the sweet harmony of her eyes will make both their hearts rise to heaven

The 1991 is fluid and expressive.  It's crowing -- it's a lover bragging about his beloved's beauty though, and that may not be the best way.  And I feel a bit let down by the final "Pian pian in suso vano in paradiso."

What do we get in 2018? A transcription for plucked instrument! A good transcription, beautifully and languidly praised played -- this transcription isn't at all boastful, it's like the sort of thing a lover may whisper to his partner when lying together post coitus. The instruments in 2018 are at least as expressive as the voices in 1991 -- maybe more so. The final instrumental "Pian pian in suso vano in paradiso" in 2018 is extraordinary -- too sweet? I think that would be harsh myself.

[atm]

I used to love this and its still good.

I think that using female singers helps to separate the voices.

[Mandryka]

Rogers Covey-Crump's essay Tuning Dufay

TUNING DUFAY


If you have succeeded in absorbing my essays which accompanied the first three Hilliard Live issues then much of this final chapter re-covers old ground. If you have not read the first three chapters or you remain baffled then once more I will try to elucidate.

Western art music uses a scale of pitches that derives directly from the teachings of Pythagoras. The so-called Pythagorean scale is composed of twelve notes that produce perfectly in tune (Just) octaves, fifths, fourths and major seconds and these intervals are composed of vibration frequencies that have simple whole number ratios. The octave is defined by the ratio 2:1, fifth 3:2, fourth 4:3 and second 9:8. In this scale all other intervals are impure (out of tune) and defined by complex ratios of vibration frequencies. The interval between two pitches is only perceived by a trained ear as "in tune" when the constituent pitches match adja-cent or closely related members of the Overtone (Harmonic) series. These pitches all occur within the first 16 overtones of a fundamental note save the 19:16 minor third and the chromatic semitone which is the interval between the 24th and the 25th overtone (25:24). Note that the generally accepted Just minor third is the wider 6:5 interval.
The history of fixed (keyboard) Western tuning systems is the movement away from Pythagoras towards systems that produced more intervals that were closer to pure, in particular the major third, and then, ironically, back towards a system that ultimately became the international standard point of reference, i.e. Equal Temperament in which the only absolutely in-tune, pure interval is the octave. The only advantage of Equal Temperament is that all keys are equally out of tune.

Practical experience and analysis of a cape//a singing has convinced me that expe-rienced amateur and professional singers tend towards Just (Pure) Intonation, particularly as the size of the ensemble approaches one voice to a part and this is the medium that I am concerned with in this discussion.
Three notes of the diatonic Just scale depart from Pythagoras by the same tiny interval known as the Syntonic Comma (ratio 81:801. For newcomers or as a refresher here is the scale; the pitches with a zero subscript are in their Pythagorean "slot" and the pitches with a minus-one subscript are lower than their Pythagorean slot by one syntonic comma in order to achieve Just major thirds C-E, F-A, G-B and minor thirds E-G and A-C. Note that D-F remains a narrow minor third:

Co Do E_1 Fo Go A_1 B_1 Co
This diatonic (white-note) scale has the advantage of perfectly tuned triads on C, E, F, G and A. To expand the available triads using black-notes we can introduce varieties of F#, C#, G#, Bb and Eb. If F# is a comma flat and C# and G# two commas flat on Pythagorean and the two flats, BL, and EL,, are a comma higher, the complete Just scale could look like this:

Co C#_2 Do E6+1 E_1 Fo F#_1 Go G#_2 A_1 BI,±1 9_1 (Co)

This increases the number of good triads but it does not solve the problem of the imperfect fifth above D. To achieve an A a perfect fifth above D we would need another version of A, an Ao. And so on...

During the fifteenth century, by the end of which keyboards were fully chromatic, a system was developed that produced eight Just (perfectly tuned) major thirds and eight slightly narrow minor thirds. The cost of this was the impurity involved in narrowing the fifths by a quarter of a comma. This was the Quarter-comma Mean Tone system. As a fixed tuning it matches Just tuning more closely than any other system and is without doubt the sound that composers lived with from the 1450s until the late 17th century.

Unaccompanied voices have probably always tended towards Just tuning since pitch is not fixed for a singer and a chord is only perceived as "in tune" if it is without the roughness of impurity. In theory a singer has the chance to tune every chord perfectly but in practice this will only happen if each note of the scale has a stability of pitch within a given context such as a movement from a Mass setting. My previous articles refer to notes having different "slots" according to context. One common and generally unconscious dilemma is the tuning of A above D or D below A. Context will normally make one pitch dominant so that the other voice tunes to the dominant pitch. Thus A can be Ao above (or below) Do, or A_1 above (or below) D_1. Clearly a flat A can push the Do down towards D_1. Lack of aware-ness in this situation can destabilise the ambient pitch. A fifth where the sub-scripts are mismatched is out of tune. A major third must be a comma narrower than a match and a minor third a comma wider. Matching of subscripts indicates a Pythagorean interval and only octaves, fifths, fourths and 9:8 major seconds are both Pythagorean and Just, whereas sixths, thirds and minor seconds need the comma adjustment. Sevenths are another problem.

To take a musical context the third Agnus of the Missa Se la face ay pale will do just fine since it fits the simple Just "white note" scale with just one accidental, the BL, (Bi,+1). However there is a problem harmony where the notes D, F, and B occur simultaneously in the vertical (harmonic) sense. F to B is in isolation always a dissonance and Do to Fo is the narrow Pythagorean minor third but much easier on the ear than the wide Pythagorean major third (Ditone) since it is very close to a naturally occurring minor third between the 19th and 16th overtones. The funda-mental frequency of a D and an F in this relationship is a D and the interval is also very close to a modern Equal Temperament minor third. Another factor in favour or the Fo above Do rather than F+1 is that Fo accommodates readily in our ears to a seventh above Go. The Just tuning of a dominant seventh (such as G-B-D-F) de-mands an F more than a comma lower than Fo and this version of F is only truly consonant with a B_1. This harmony becomes progressively more significant through the 1 5th and 16th centuries and essential in Barbershop singing. Dufay only uses a harmony on the fifth D-A at one point in this movement, viz. the last crotchet of bar 16 and the first minim's worth of bar 17 in the printed example. So although D, B and F combine in bars 2, 4, and 12, only the A at the point just referred to, in the Tenor 2 (third stave down), has to be treated as an Ao rather than the ambient A_1.

[Example from the opeing bars of the Agnus Dei of M. Se La Face ay pale]

Much of the beauty of this Mass resides in the intense major key feel that in turn derives from the ballade melody's strong C-E-G triad. Since we always perform this Mass a whole tone lower to fit our voice ranges the alert listener will spot that we are in B flat major.

Dufay, born a century after Machaut, is already light-years ahead of the medieval master in his frequent use of the major mode and much English music from the mid-fifteenth century fits a trend away from the minor modes. It has been sug-gested that the Contenance Angloise noted by the Continentals was characterised by the full triads and the possibility of Just tuning that the harmonic framework increasingly adopted by English composers allowed. An ensemble's tendency to-wards Just tuning in a capella performance enhances the sonority of the texture because experienced singers are confident of the right placing of a pitch: no ac-commodation to the compromise of a tempered keyboard is necessary as the range of both major and minor triads is all within the white-note scale. The devel-opment of harmony after the fifteenth century naturally complicated matters but as a unifying system Mean Tone tuning could accommodate almost all the chro-matic excesses even of a bold experimenter such as Gesualdo. For a time har-monic structure minimised the D-A problem or its transposed equivalent by avoid-ing triads on D and Dufay tends to do so here. It can be shown that English music recognised the consonant possibility of the major third a generation or two before continental composers and Dufay was perhaps the first notable European com-poser to take up some of the stylistic innovations of an English composer, in the shape of John Dunstable, and the latter's disciples Frye and Plummer.

Rogers Covey-Crump

[Mandryka]

https://www.youtube.com/v/CjxX5Lxtges      

Bjorn Schmelzer's experiment in singing Dufay's Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae stands out from the crowd, for interesting reasons.

First, he takes his time, challenging  the early HIP idea that C15 motets are about rigid rhythms being tossed around and modified in a jaunty and exciting way -- Schmelzer is fluid and expressive and slow, and is like the ondulations of water caressed by the gentle breeze, or maybe the breath of God.  He doesn't so much make it dance as make it slink.

His is the only a cappella performance I've found apart from Capilla Flamenca's -- who sing it jauntily. One of the consequences of a cappella is that the harmonies are brought to your attention a bit more clearly, you don't have a contrasting instrumental timbre  to draw your attention to the independence of the voices at the expense of the chords. But the harmony in Schmelzer's is SO different from Capilla Flamenca's, presumably because of the way that the singers are harmonising, the way they're using enharmonic differences and microtones and possibly semitones to create.

And thirdly he uses every trick in the book to micromanage the expressiveness of the singing. It's not that the others are cold, it's rather that Graindelavoix is much much more in tune with the poem's meaning. Listen to the wobble in the voice on the word esplorée (weeping) in

Pere du filz dont suis mere esplorée

Listen to the way the dissonances express the emotion of

Qui ont souffert telle durté villaine
Faire à mon filz, qui tant m'a hounourée.

This is a madrigalesque performance. 

When I heard him Dufay in concert, without following the text, it was too much, too intense for me, but maybe that's my own limitation, and what he did must have been interesting enough to make me go back to it today.  Graindelavoix are making Dufay into a composer who really challenges the audiences readiness to feel. I'm inclined to believe that that's exactly what we need to make Dufay our contemporary, to make Dufay matter.

[Que]

 

His is the only a cappella performance I've found apart from Capilla Flamenca's -- who sing it jauntily. One of the consequences of a cappella is that the harmonies are brought to your attention a bit more clearly, you don't have a contrasting instrumental timbre  to draw your attention to the independence of the voices at the expense of the chords. But the harmony in Schmelzer's is SO different from Capilla Flamenca's, presumably because of the way that the singers are harmonising, the way they're using enharmonic differences and microtones and possibly semitones to create.

Love that Capilla Flamenca recording! 

[Vinbrulé]

Lena Susanne Norin, I love your voice ! 
12 Dufay's numbers , 5 Binchois' and some other things.
Track 18 "Segnor Leon" particularly strikes me. 
 

[Mandryka]

Lena Susanne Norin, I love your voice ! 
12 Dufay's numbers , 5 Binchois' and some other things.
Track 18 "Segnor Leon" particularly strikes me. 

Yes, very good! Not just the tone and the way she projects, she's good with the diction too.

[Vinbrulé]

Prompted by a reviewer named "Gio" on Amazon , I have ordered this Dufay compilation.  Must say I agree with Gio in every respect.
This is a totally convincing proposal of hits, plus a keyboard piece by Conrad Paumann.
I was acquainted with the Ciconia CD of Diabolus in Musica, so I'm not surprised to find them singing Dufay state-of-the-art  (IMO)
To be put alongside the beautiful  'The Dufay Spectacle'  of Gothic Voices.  This music makes me happy 

[Mandryka]

Prompted by a reviewer named "Gio" on Amazon , I have ordered this Dufay compilation.  Must say I agree with Gio in every respect.
This is a totally convincing proposal of hits, plus a keyboard piece by Conrad Paumann.
I was acquainted with the Ciconia CD of Diabolus in Musica, so I'm not surprised to find them singing Dufay state-of-the-art  (IMO)
To be put alongside the beautiful  'The Dufay Spectacle'  of Gothic Voices.  This music makes me happy 

It's strange to see the review by Maddy Evil on amazon for that CD, just because her attitude is so doctrinaire, Her remark

the consensus of most of today's preeminent medieval music specialists, who have provided compelling evidence and arguments in favour of "a cappella" (unaccompanied voices) performances as being the norm.

isn't correct as far as I know. In 2010 she bemoaned the fact that

the "voices + instruments" stranglehold remains so persistent that even a predominantly vocal group feels the need to orchestrate this music.

Things haven't changed much after nine years, I'm probably missing something but I can only find a handful of songs from Gothic Voices and a couple of things from Orlando Consort (one religious, so maybe it doesn't count!), some things from Hilliard (sweet love, sweet hope) and some of the things from Medieval Ensemble of London - all Brits. You have to wonder why.


As far as the recording itself goes, I don't find myself particularly enjoying the voices there, without finding them offensive -- but voices are like sexual partners, who can say why we like what we like?

[Vinbrulé]

"Maddy Evil"  is another person , I have read (and followed) some review of this "Gio" ( I think he's Italian ) and feel all in all in tune with him.
To be honest the CD The Dufay Spectacle offers more variety of mood and sound , sacred and secular pieces + some instrumental , and there is a sort of crescendo as the program goes on ( the final item is gorgeous ) .  But I like very much the DiM compilation as well.  Perhaps a bit too intimate and languid. Still I have greatly enjoyed it.

[Mandryka]

You should come and hear Diabolus in Musica sing a Dufay mass in Musée de Cluny in Paris in a couple of weeks.

[Vinbrulé]

I live near Bologna, I can't come to Paris.  But I forced myself in a three-day-full-immersion in the recordinds of DiM :
a) Messe de Notre Dame - Machaut
b) Honi soit qui mal y pense  ( anthology of medieval english music ..... very very good !! )
c) last but not least ... Messe Se la face ay pale - Dufay
Result :  I have become a fan of this wonderful group ( in spite of their "Diabolic" name    )

[Mandryka]

That recording of English music really does capture what they sound like very well, at least what they sounded like when I heard them sing Ockeghem last year. Loud and proud. Assertive.

[Vinbrulé]

Honi soit qui mal y pense :  Unfortunately I bought this CD used and it has arrived without the booklet !!  Anyway , wholly enjoyed it .  Now I MUST search for other discs from DiM   

[Mandryka]

Honi soit qui mal y pense

LOL. Shame on me.