Songs of Angels
Songs of Ecstasy by Gautier de COINCY
New London Consort

medieval.org

2002
Decca 460 794-2

March 10-12, 1998
All Saints Church, Tooting, London

1 - Amours, qui bien ses enchanter   [12:04]
2 - Mere Dieu, Virge senee   [6:59]
3 - S'amour dont sui espris   [7:39]
4 - Talenz m'est pris orendroit   [8:59]
5 - Hui matin a l'ajournee   [7:38]
6 - Hui enfantez   [3:53]
7 - Ma viële   [4:23]
8 - Entendez tuit ensemble   [21:02]




New London Consort
Philip Pickett

Joanne Lunn • soprano
Hedvig Åberg • soprano
Faye Newton • soprano
Andrew King • tenor
Andrew Murgatroyd • tenor
Nick Hurndall-Smith • tenor
Roderick Williams • baritone
Matthew Brook • bass
Mark Rowlinson • bass

Frances Kelly • harp
Tom Finucane • gittern
Pavlo Beznosiuk • fiddle
Catherine Finnis • fiddle
Sharona Joshua • organ, clavicembalum
Philip Pickett • symphony, recorder






Pillar of Angels, Strasbourg Cathedral





Songs of Angels

"We should sing of the Virgin both day and night as the Angels do. All those who sing sweetly enchant the Devil and lull him to sleep. Now listen as I sing."

Gautier de Coincy was born at Coincy-l'Abbaye in 1177 or 1178. According to the Chronicum S. Medardi Suessonensis he became a monk when fifteen or sixteen years old in 1193. In 1214 he was named Prior of the monastery at Vic-sur-Aisne (about ten miles west of Soissons) and remained there for nineteen years. At around the age of fifty-five he became Abbot of St.-Médard in Soissons, where he died in 1236. His literary works – the Miracles de Nostre-Dame and a number of religious chansons – reveal him to have been a man of great learning and culture, clearly familiar with the many forms of secular and sacred song and verse current at the time.

This new realisation of Gautier de Coincy's Chansons à la Vierge from his Miracles de Nostre-Dame delves deeply into the medieval musical imagination, combining thirteenth-century earthly performance practices with contemporary concepts of angelic music-making – the hierarchy of the heavens, the harmony of the spheres and the heavenly muses. It draws on medieval paintings and stone-carvings as well as visionary and mystical descriptions left by St John, Hildegard of Bingen, Aurelian of Réôme, Richard Rolle and the Blessed Henry Suso, who not only saw angels playing rebecs, fiddles and harps but joined with them in round dances:

After he had spent many hours in contemplating the joys of the angels ... there came to him a youth ... and with him many other noble youths ... then they drew him by the hand into the dance, and the youth began a joyous song about the infant Jesus, which runs thus: In dulci jubilo ... the leader of the song knew right well how to guide them, and he sang first, and they sang after him. Thrice the leader repeated the burden of the song.

(The Life of Blessed H. Suso, by Himself, translated T.F. Knox 1865)

The mystic Suso (Heinrich Seuse, c.1295-1366) was a German Dominican monk who at the age of eighteen took upon himself the role of Servant of the Eternal Wisdom. He probably knew the song before his vision – his account is similar to others where angels perform well-known chant melodies – and his description of a leader, a refrain and a probable round-dance makes the angelic performance sound remarkably like that of an earthly religious carole, or dance-song.



The Virgin Mary and the Miracle Legends

No figure in the New Testament owes more to legend than that of the Virgin Mary. The Gospel account, in which she rarely appears and still more rarely speaks, must have seemed increasingly inadequate, and so in the early Christian period there arose the apocryphal stories which later satisfied the medieval appetite for information about her.

In Christian theology the cult of Mary began to grow in the sixth and seventh centuries. It made some headway in the circle around Charlemagne's court, and various Offices and Feasts were introduced in the ninth and tenth centuries, but the worship of the Virgin remained little more than a variant of the cults of the individual saints, holding no special significance until early in the eleventh century, when the popular Miracle Legends began to be written down. These were further assembled into collections in several countries in the twelfth century, each collection being given a title such as "The Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary". From then on the cult developed – the Office of the Virgin was recited daily, the greatest cathedrals were built in her name, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was anticipated and the new Orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, spread her cult among the people.



The Miracles de Nostre-Dame

Gautier's Miracles de Nostre-Dame survives in more than 80 manuscripts, of which 22 also contain music. It was presumably written sometime between 1214 and 1233, while Gautier was Prior at Vic-sur-Aisne (he describes himself as "Li prior de Vi"), and consists of an immense narrative, some 30,000 lines long, which recounts in verse the numerous miracles associated with the Virgin Mary. Gautier explains that he found these stories in a Latin manuscript - several possible sources survive, but it is impossible to trace exactly the origins of all the material contained in this enormous work. The Miracles was extremely influential and popular throughout the Middle Ages, providing inspiration for several imitations in France and elsewhere.

At three points in the course of the long narrative of the Miracles Gautier inserts groups of songs with music. The verses are for the most part original poems in praise of the Virgin, while the melodies are drawn from a variety of different sources. The numerous manuscripts containing the Miracles also include a number of similar songs – not part of the cycle, but perhaps also written by Gautier. While the trouvères, who were Gautier's contemporaries, wrote songs which were almost exclusively secular, those found in the Miracles constitute the earliest significant collection of vernacular songs on sacred subjects, mainly devoted to the Virgin. Gautier, like another near-contemporary, Philippe the Chancellor of Paris (d.1236), set most of his sacred poems to melodies of secular origin, perhaps with his stated intention of "enchanting the devil and lulling him to sleep". Other poems, however, are set to melodies or polyphonic works associated with the repertory of the great cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. In addition to the songs which are set to known sacred or secular melodies, the Miracles also contains a number of songs which are set to melodies unknown from any other source, and it is quite possible that these melodies were composed by Gautier himself.

Philip Pickett

Paolo Veneziano: Coro di Angeli
Palazzo Venezia, Roma