JOYE Les plaintes de Gilles de Bins dit Binchois
Graindelavoix Björn Schmelzer
GCD P32102
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Performing artists
Graindelavoix Björn Schmelzer, director
menestrels de bouche Patrizia Hardt Silvie Moors Yves Van HandenhovePaul De Troyer Lieven GouwyBart Meynckens Bjšrn Schmelzer
joueurs de bas instruments Thomas Baeté, fiddleLiam Fennelly, fiddle William Taylor, harpJan Van Outryve, lute
Production details
Playing time: 73’52 Recorded at Église de Franc-Waret (Belgium), in October 2006 Engineered and produced by Manuel Mohino Executive producer: Carlos Céster Editorial assistant: María Díaz Cover design & illustrations: oficina tresminutos 00:03:00 Booklet essay: Björn Schmelzer Booklet in English-Français-Nederlands-Español
Links & downloads
Commercial release sheet (PDF)
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GILLES BINCHOIS (†1460)
1 Adieu mes tres belles amours 2 Amoureux suy 3 Je ne pouroye estre joyeux 4 Se la belle n’a voloir 5 Qui veut mesdire 6 Mon seul et souverain désir 7 Les tres doulx yeux 8 Adieu, jusque je vous revoye 9 Tant plus ayme 10 Esclave puist yl devenir 11 Adieu mon amoureuse joye
12 Déploration sur la mort de Binchois (Johannes Ockeghem)
About this CD
Having been responsible for an enthralling and provocative pairing of Ockeghem’s Missa Caput and Parisian machicotage for their first Glossa release (GCD P32101), Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix have taken the composer who Ockeghem regarded as the ‘father of joy’ – Gilles Binchois – as their next challenge. Yet what Björn Schmelzer has assembled for this new recording, entitled Joye, contains, in fact, a number of plaintes or laments by Binchois. How so? “For me,” Schmelzer says, “Binchois is one of the greatest songwriters of all times. He (and Ockeghem) lived and loved to live in a world of paradoxes which he integrated into his work. The happiness and joy that such composers talked about are not common feelings, but something deeper, a sublime joye – one you can only express in sadness, despair, solitude, distance and absence of love. Words like ‘souvenir’ and ‘joye’ are used as devices in much the same way as can be found in other great song traditions, such as the saudade, blues, duende or tarab. Our work with the songs of Binchois started from the preoccupation of singing out one’s sadness and raising it into a kind of sublime expression which can be understood and felt by everybody. We searched also for a new sound and a new way of dealing with instrumental involvement and ornamentation, but one that involved finding a true (and therefore ‘authentic’) sound in which words, ornaments, phrasing and lines speak again and allow one to feel this ‘douloureuse joye’.”
In what is set to be a career-defining opportunity for Graindelavoix, Glossa’s Antwerp-based ensemble, along with its director Björn Schmelzer, is joining forces with choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and her company Rosas for a new music and dance production Cesena which will have its world première performance at this year’s Festival d’Avignon in France. On July 16 the medieval Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes – the meeting point of the Old and New Papal Palaces – will provide the setting at the time of 4.30am for an interpretation in sound and movement of the rhythmically and harmonically complex 14th century musical repertory known as the Ars subtilior (strongly associated with the Papal Court in Avignon). [read more...]
For the ensemble Graindelavoix’s fifth recording for Glossa, Cecus, Björn Schmelzer has gathered together musicians from Spain, Estonia, the UK, France and Belgium to complete a triptych of recordings presenting an alternative view of performance practice from across a century of Franco-Flemish polyphony. After Joye and La Magdalene, Cecus focuses on music by Alexander Agricola and his contemporaries and concerns itself with music associated with blind players (notably two fiddlers from Bruges) and memory and commemoration (laments on the deaths of Agricola and Johannes Ockeghem) coming from the chapel of Philippe le Beau and Juana of Castile. [read more...]
With only their third CD Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix have just secured two of the awards at this year’s Klara-Muziekprijzen ceremony, held at the start of November in the group’s native Belgium.
Poissance d’amours – released by Glossa – was selected by the awards jury of the classical music radio station Klara for the best Flemish production of the year and also by the station’s listeners for the Public prize for 2008.[read more...]
“Making these old, broken stones sing is a wonderful experience”
Following Caput and Joye you are now turning to another area of the medieval musical world. What has inspired you to consider 13th-century Brabant?
After trying to show two important 15th-century composers in a different musical light, I thought it would be interesting to do a programme which is more geographical yet at the same time more “virtual”: one based only on musical remnants, traces and ruins. In this way we might try and create the sound world of an entire region: rather than producing portraits one would be able to paint full landscapes of scenes hitherto lost and in need of being invented anew. [read more...]