Guillaume de Machaut had one of the more interesting lives of any composer–highly educated, a renowned poet, survivor of the Black Death, and first-hand witness to the banquets, tournaments, and war campaigns of his patron John, king of Bohemia–and there’s no doubt that his music at least occasionally reflected the impact of these adventures. On this fine recording, third in a series of Machaut programs by Dominique Vellard and his Ensemble Gilles Binchois, the singers follow an interpretive and sonic/textural path similar to their previous forays into this repertoire. For more discussion of this group’s performing style and approach to Machaut in particular, see my review of the Messe de Nostre Dame (type Q2103 in Search Reviews). Again, the vocal lines are sharply focused and colored with a reedy timbre (ideally complementing the various wind, percussion, and string instruments that accompany them), lavished with inflection that sensibly elucidates the texts of these primarily secular love songs.
Vellard attempts to add a more comprehensive view of Machaut by including dramatic readings of some of the composer’s poetic texts–a feature that some listeners will find enlightening and others will find merely incompatible with the musical program, and thus (as I did) an intrusion. Although I understand the theoretical reasoning, somehow on a recording I never find interrupting music with readings to be very successful, especially readings of the overly dramatic type in a language in which I’m not fluent. To each his own, however–and besides if you just listen to the music, you’ll find enough rewards here to more than justify the inconvenience of figuring out how to program your CD player to exclude the six spoken tracks, which by the way are expertly delivered in Old French by actor Jean-Paul Racodon. The sound, recorded at Eglise Saint-Martin de La Motte Ternant, gives full measure of biting resonance and clarity to the well-chosen and arranged voices and instruments.
