MOTETS
Music from Northern France: the Cambrai manuscript A 410

01 Anonymous Aucuns vont souvent / Amor qui cor vulnerat / KYRIE ELEISON
02 Gobin de Rains (instr.) Pour le tens qui verdoie
03 Anonymous J’ai mis toute ma pensee lonc tens / Je n’en puis mais / PUERORUM
04 Anonymous Par une matinee / Mellis stilla / DOMINO
05 Eustache le Peintre de Rains (instr.) Nient plus que droiz
06 Anonymous O virgo pia / Lis ne glay / AMAT
07 Anonymous Dieus ou porrai je trouver merci / Che sont amouretes / OMNES
08 Anonymous Descendendo Dominus / Ascendendo Dominus / DOMINO
09 Anonymous O Maria virgo Davitica / O Maria maris stella / VERITATEM
10 Anonymous (instr.) J’ai mis toute ma pensee lonc tens / Je n’en puis mais / PUERORUM
11 Anonymous Ave lux luminum / Salve virgo rubens rosa / NEUMA
12 Eustache le Peintre de Rains (instr.) Cil qui chantent de fleur
13 Anonymous Plus bele que flor / Quant revient et fuelle et flor / L’autrier joer m’en alai / FLOS FILIUS EIUS
14 Anonymous Chorus innocentium / In Bethleem / IN BETHLEEM

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About this CD

With Motets, Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix conclude their innovative exploration of musical worlds comparable to that of the Northern French artist Villard de Honnecourt, the producer of a carnet (or portfolio) of drawings made in connection with the new Gothic cathedrals being built in the 13th century. Villard’s diagrams reflect a working activity carried out on the move and is echoed both in Graindelavoix’s choice of repertoire for Motets – the 13th-century motets appended, in haste, to a 12th-century manuscript found in Cambrai (close to Villard’s home village) – and in the restlessness of the Belgian ensemble’s performance style, ever in motion and striving to combine the different layers of the bilingual sacred and secular texts.

Graindelavoix’s director Björn Schmelzer contributes another of his striking, iconoclastic essays, presenting the development of the 13th-century motet in France in a radical new light: as a mirror to the Gothic fascination with automata, to the experience of moving around the new and vast cathedrals, as well as the secrecy which surrounds medieval memory and oral traditions. In concluding this special, ground-breaking trilogy of recordings for Glossa, Schmelzer underlines the importance of the work of Villard in our modern-day understanding of how music in the 13th century was constructed and perhaps performed. The same such ideas inform the vocal (and instrumental) textures and delivery offered by Graindelavoix.