Corps femenin: L'Avant-garde de Jean Duc de Berry (Ferrara Ensemble, Crawford Young) (2010)

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Corps femenin: L'Avant-garde de Jean Duc de Berry (Ferrara Ensemble, Crawford Young) (2010)

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This release may have something to do with the revival of the label after the death of its founder, for the recording, begun in 2000, was finally finished last year. We should be grateful for the persistence, since Crawford Young’s interest in the Ars Subtilior, Angelorum psalat tripudium , which opens the program, engaged Young so completely that he wrote an article about it in Ricercare recently. Young’s scholarly credentials may be judged by the fact that an important article by Yolanda Plumley in Early Music History No. 22 (2003) cites two of his earlier Arcana recordings. Plumley was writing about the patronage of French princes, and her article was a peek into her work on the commentary and facsimile of Codex Chantilly that appeared two years ago. The subtitle of the disc wraps up all of this as “the avant-garde of John Duke of Berry.”

It is not the Codex Chantilly that was compiled for the duke but some of the music that was later copied into it. The disc is titled after Corps femenin , a song by Solage previously recorded only in the Gothic Voices’ disc ( Fanfare 30:4), that may have been composed for the wedding of the duke’s son to Catherine, daughter of Charles V. (Not mentioned is their relationship, first cousins; her age, nine; and her death two years later.) Calextone , also heard here, belongs to the same occasion. Three other songs are connected with the second marriage of the duke himself in 1389: Passerose de beaute, Quant joyne cuer , and Roses et lis ay veu . Young has a sharp eye, for he second-guesses Plumley in her commentary by reading the name of the composer of Angelorum psalat tripudium , “Suciredor,” as a reversed spelling of Rodericus (Plumley indexes him as “S.Uciredor,” which misses the point) and reading the song “Roses et lis ay veu” as it clearly appears in the facsimile (Plumley indexes it as “Rose et lis ay veu”). He draws connections between Angelorum psalat tripudium and an illuminated page in the celebrated Tres Riches Heures of Jean duke of Berry (long available in a gorgeous facsimile), connecting the dots even further.

If the notes make a fascinating essay, the music is equally entrancing. While four pieces are rendered instrumentally (oddly including the disc title piece, which has a text significant in the annotation), the rest are sung with all the strophes, something still not done often enough in this repertoire. Anyone who remembers Young’s earlier discs will not need much urging to grab this one. It’s very well done.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber