Guillaume de MACHAUT et l'art des TrouvèresEmmanuel Bonnardot
Viéles et voix du Moyen Age



medieval.org
Calliope CAL 9308

2001



Si la voix au Moyen Age est le plus bel instrument, la vièle à archet est sa meilleure compagne : elle chante, danse, accompagne et joue en polyphonie.
Ce programme se compose d'estampies, de conduits, de motets et de chansons des plus grands trouvères : Gace Brulé, Gautier De Coincy, Adam De La Halle, Lescurel, jusqu'a Guillaume De Machaut (XIVème siècle), le dernier de cette lignée de mélodistes, poètes et musiciens. A la voix fluide, précise et chaleureuse d'Emmanuel Bonnardot se méle la grande variété des vièles, violes, violetta, vihuela de arco, rebecs, crwth, gigue, fidle et tout ce que l'on peut faire d'archets... et de mots ensemble.

If the voice was the instrument of the Middle Ages, the medieval fiddle was its closest companion, accompanying and playing melodies, dances, and polyphony. This programme is composed of estampies, conductus, motets and songs by the greatest Trouvères, up to and including Guillaume de Machaut, the last of that fine lineage of melodists, poets and musicians of northern France.
The fluidity, warmth and precision of Emmanuel Bonnardot's voice is joined by an exciting variety of bowed instruments, including fiddles, violetta, gigue, vihuela de arco, rebecs, rotes and crwth. The result is an undiluted delight.





anonyme
1. La quarte estampie roial   [2:35]   5 vièles et rebecs

Gautier de COINCY
2. Ma vièle vièler veut un biau son   [4:57]   chanson — chant, 5 vièles et rebecs

anonyme
3. Ave Maris stella   [3:17]   conduit — 3 vièles

Gace BRULÉ
4. Cil qui d'amors me consoille   [5:01]   chanson — chant et citole

anonyme
5. In seculum viellatoris   [1:58]   motet — 3 vièles
6. In seculum   [0:44]   motet — 3 vièles

Colin MUSET
7. En mai   [4:24]   rebec, puis chant

anonyme
8. La tierche estampie roial   [2:39]   5 vièles et rebecs
9. L'autrier joer m'en alai   [2:11]   motet — voix, crwth et 2 vièles
10. Tuit cil qui sunt enamourat   [2:00]   rondeau de carol et motet — 4 voix, 5 vièles et rebecs
11. Apris ai qu'en chantant plour   [3:58]   chanson — chant

ALPHONSE LE SAGE
12. A Virgen mui groriosa   [1:37]   cantiga — rebec   CSM 42

Chastelain de COUCY
13. La douce voiz du rosignol sauvage   [4:24]   chanson — voix, citole à archet

anonyme
14. Ne m'oubliez mie   [1:11]   motet — voix et vièle valencienne

Jehannot de LESCUREL
15. Belle comme loiaus amans   [3:12]   chanson — 5 vièles et rebecs

Adam de la HALLE
16. Fu maris   [0:59]   rondeau — 3 voix
17. Li dous regars   [1:07]   rondeau — 3 vièles
18. On demande mout souvent qu'est amours   [3:40]   chanson — chant et vièle

Jehannot de LESCUREL
19. Gracieusette   [1:59]   chanson — 5 vièles et rebecs
20. Amour trop vous doit cherir   [2:05]   chanson — 5 vièles et rebecs

Guillaume de MACHAUT
21. Le lay mortel   [11:53]   voix, crwth et psaltérion
22. Chanson roial   [1:49]   5 vièles et rebecs




Emmanuel Bonnardot
Barnabé Janin, Jean-Loup Descamps, Susanne Meyer, Valérie Ingert
et
Hélène Moreau (psaltérion) pour le Lai de Machaut




Enregistrement réalisé en juin 2001 en l'église de Sergines
Direction technique : Igor Kirkwood
Direction artistique et montage : Alessandra Galleron
Direction générale de la production : Jacques Le Calvé, Michael Adda
Graphisme : Marie Gourdon
Illustration couverture : Vierge à l'enfant, Turino Vanni, XIVème siècle
Remerciements à Monsieur le curé et à la paroisse de Sergines
Instruments fabriqués par Judith Kraft et Bernard Prunier
℗ Arpège 2001 et © Calliope 2001
www.calliope.tm.fr




Après avoir débuté sa carrière de chanteur au sein des ensembles «La Chapelle Royale de Paris» et «Les Arts Florissants», Emmanuel Bonnardot, également instrumentiste (vièle à archet), s'est particulièrement illustré dans le répertoire médiéval, d'abord avec Dominique Vellard ou comme membre cofondateur de l'ensemble Alla Francesca, aux côtés de Brigitte Lesne et Pierre Hamon (en Europe, Amérique, Asie, Océanie), il dirige l'ensemble vocal et instrumental Obsidienne (Diapason d'Or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, 5 étoiles Goldberg...) qui offre un large éventail de spectacles musicaux et de programmes inédits.
Il se produit également en récital, en duos avec Gisela Bellsolà, Claude-Henry Joubert, Jean-Claude Mathon ou dans un spectacle original de chansons contemporaines La Dérive des Continents (en France, Algérie, Roumanie).

After starting his career as a singer with the music ensembles «La Chapelle Royale de Paris» and «Les Arts Florissants», Emmanuel Bonnardot, also an instrumentalist (the bowed viol), has particularly dedicated himself to the medieval repertoire, at first with Dominique Vellard, or as a co-founder of the Alla Francesca ensemble, along with Brigitte Lesne and Pierre Hamon (in Europe, America, Asia and Oceania). He is the musical director of the vocal and instrumental ensemble Obsidienne (Diapason d'Or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, 5 étoiles Goldberg, among other awards) which offers a broad spectrum of musical shows and musical discoveries.
He also performs in solo recitals and in duet with Gisela Bellsolà, Claude-Henry Joubert, Jean-Claude Mathon, as well as in an original show of contemporary songs with La Dérive des Continents (in France,Algeria, Rumania).







Trouvères

Trover, meaning first of all to compose a tune or poem, then to invent, and finally to find (someone or something) after a deliberate search, gave rise to trouvère, a general term used to describe northern French poet-musicians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The poetic language of the trouvères was the langue d'oïl (known to us today as Old French), as opposed to the langue d'oc (Occitan) of their southern counterparts, the troubadours (from the Provençal trobaire, poet). Their enormous repertoire is largely a celebration of love, a sort of parallel liturgy, in which the poet, generally speaking in the first person, puts himself, body and soul, at the service of his lady. The sources of this art are possibly to be found on the one hand in The Song of Songs, which was widely read in the twelfth century, and on the other hand in Hispano-Moresque poetry. Although the lady is central to each chanson, the form (usually strophic) varies somewhat: dance songs (the carole, which gave rise to the rondeau, the ballade, and the virelai), the chanson de toile (weaving or spinning song), the chanson d'aube (a piece appropriate to the dawn or early morning), crusading songs, pastourelles (with a pastoral theme), reverdies (set in springtime), and also religious songs, in which the poet's love for his lady is interwoven with his love for the Virgin Mary.

The medieval fiddle was almost always played while singing. The singer could play the melody in unison with his voice, but he could also play a drone note. And he could use ornamental formulas to vary the melody, or he could play the melody at an interval of a fifth (Gautier de Coinci uses the term quintoier). The music theorist Johannes de Grocheo (modern gallicisation: Jean de Grouchy), author of a treatise entitled Ars musice (c1300), regarded the fiddle as a king of instruments because of its suitability for all forms of music.

In the works of Gautier de Coinci the fiddle is much more than a musical instrument: it is also Gautier's voice (both physical and poetic), it is Gautier himself, and even more than that: it is his soul. Are we possibly interpreting the text too lyrically and giving too much nobility to this instrument, played by minstrels? Not if we remember that in the sermon concluding his second book of Miracles de Nostre Dame, Gautier asked us to listen to le lai que l'Évangile nous vièle (the lay which the Gospel plays to us on the fiddle). If God himself plays the fiddle, it cannot be unseemly to compare the soul to the fiddle!

Gautier de Coinci (1176/77-1236) was prior of the monastery at Vic-sur-Aisne (near Soissons), then abbot of St Médard in Soissons. Apart from his Vie de Sainte Christine, Gautier's ouvre comprised two books of Miracles de Nostre Dame written between 1214 and 1236, and over forty thousand lines long, including some twenty songs to the Virgin Mary. Although he was not a composer in the modern sense of the term, and although he often borrowed melodies from others for his songs (such exchanges were common in the art of the trouvères), he was not only very talented as an arranger (to use a modern term), but he was even more than that, for many of his songs are real masterpieces.

Gace Brulé (born c.1160, probably in Champagne, died after 1213) was of noble birth. Gace may be a form of Gatien, and Brulé is merely a description of his blazonry, altered through the transposition of two letters: his shield was banded in red and silver (burelé de gueueles et d'argent de huit pieces). He was familiar with Marie de Champagne (daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII), Blondel de Nesle and the Chastelain de Coucy. He was immensely famous, and more than a hundred chansons are attributed to him. His poetic language is difficult, metaphorical; it has been compared to that of Petrarch and to that of the nineteenth-century poet Stéphane Mallarmé!

Colin Muset was active in the thirteenth century in and around Lorraine and Champagne. The twenty or so chansons written by this jongleur (itinerant minstrel) are often far removed from the courtly tradition; they celebrate the pleasures of life. Colin's writing is totally unlike the poetry of Gace. We find a man who is straightforward, carefree, cheerful, light-fingered, and ill-mannered in a word, typically French!

Guy de Thourotte, better known as the Chastellain de Coucy (modern French Châtelain de Coucy), was castellan of Coucy le Château (north of Soissons); he died at sea in 1203 on the fourth crusade. Almost twenty chansons by this very famous trouvère poet have come down to us, each almost as accomplished in its refinement as those of Gace Brulé.

Adam de la Halle [Adam le Bossu or Adam d'Arras] (born c.1250; died before 1289) was an excellent musician and one of the few medieval musicians to be credited with both monophonic and polyphonic music. He wrote chansons, rondeaux, motets, jeux-partis, and the admirable Jeu de Robin et de Marion (a distant ancestor of the opéra comique). The rondeau (rondet de carole) became a fixed poetic form. It was quite short, sometimes playful, and the rhymes often followed the pattern ABaAabAB, as is the case with the rondeau Tuit cil qui sunt enamourat and the piece by Adam de la Halle Fi ! maris.

Jehan de Lescurel [Jehannot de Lescurel] was hanged on 23 May 1304 for murder, theft and debauchery. His thirty-four compositions are collected together in a sumptuous manuscript, also containing the Roman de Fauvel. They include ballades, rondeaux and virelais. All of his works are about love: love for his lady, love as master, love as discipline, love as the only meaning of life.

Three themes are constantly developed by the trouvères: the beauty, perfection and nobility of the lady; the loyalty of the lover and his perfection in serving his lady; death (of the lover, or of love). Among the two thousand songs by the trouvères (and the two hundred or so by the troubadours) one would expect to find at least a few banal, trite or uninspired pieces. But that is not the case. The art of these poet-musicians is a pure miracle, with constant variation and inspiration, over a period of more than a hundred and fifty years. Dozens of trouvères and troubadours contributed to an art that could be described as collective, but which was nevertheless constantly renewed by each poet-musician, who added his own personal dimension. Could we hope to evoke the fluctuations of human feelings better than the poet who analyses his distress in Le Lay mortel?

Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377) was both the founder of modern music and the last poet-musician in the trouvère tradition. His inclusion in this anthology is all the more justified, since he was a great admirer of Gautier de Coinci, whose extravagant style he often imitated. Towards the end of Le Lay mortel the lady loved by the poet is described as a star capable of guiding the traveller who has lost his way and as a sweet fountain capable of quenching the ardent thirst of his desire. We cannot help being reminded of Gautier de Coinci's praise of the Virgin Mary in Ma vièle.

Estamper meant to crush or grind (a term often used in cooking) and also to stamp or trample on. Hence the term estampie, referring to a lively, vigorous melody, a brisk and hearty song, its rhythm strongly marked with the feet.

The motet is an accumulation of melodies and words. In the polyphonic music of the Notre Dame period, the organa were in several sections, quite perceptibly different in character. Some of them were written with a sustained-note tenor (fundamental voice-part), while the others, known as clausulae, were in a more lively style. The latter, hundreds of which were written, used a clear rhythmic notation. Very soon words firstly religious, then secular were added to the upper parts of the clausulae to the duplum (second voice-part), and even to the triplum and the quadruplum (third and fourth voice-parts). And thus the motet came into being (the term comes from the Latin motetus, or motellus, a diminutive of the French mot, word). Each of the upper voice-parts was sung to a different text, but the tenor had no words, it was (possibly) sung on a vowel or played on an instrument. As the French musicologist Coussemaker pointed out (in about 1860):
«Basically, there is nothing more unusual about the motets than about some of the duets, trios and quartets that we find in modern operas On which the characters sing different texts)».

Claude-Henry Joubert / Translation: Mary Pardoe