Author: EMR2015

& Mottetti & Rondeau polifonici di Adam de la Halle
Ensemble Micrologus
58:22
Baryton CDM0026 (© 2003)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his account of the Pastourelle of Robin and Marion  by ‘the last of the trouvères’, Adam de la Halle, is painted in very bright aural colours indeed! The brash sounds of shawm, bagpipe and trumpet dominate in a spirited rendition of Adam’s music, but there are also calmer and beguiling episodes on double flute and harps where the composer’s more lyrical side is on display. Adam stands intriguingly at the confluence of the ars antiqua  and ars nova  styles, and it is fascinating that although his music inclines mainly towards the former it remained very popular and was copied long after his death, by which time the latter style was firmly in the ascendant.

The Ensemble approaches the work with their hallmark naiveté of style, vocal and instrumental, which works very well in this bucolic context. We should perhaps bear in mind that this synthesis of apparently ‘country’ verse and popular melody existed in a stylized fictional courtly world of shepherds and shepherdesses, created and performed by highly sophisticated 13th-century courtiers and professional musician/poets, so perhaps any rough rural edges to their performances were just as contrived as those cultivated by 21st-century professional musicians! There is in any case no doubt of the 13th-century taste for the bright and (to us) garish, and I have little doubt that the very immediate sounds of shawm and cornamuse and the Ensemble’s bright stringed instruments would have delighted the original audiences for this entertaining work. Given that we can be pretty sure that the Jeu de Robin et de Marion  would have been ‘staged’ in some sense of the word, I wonder if a case can be made for it being one of the earliest examples of operas. The addition of further lively dances and polyphonic motets by Adam valuably fills out our impression of the versatility of the composer, and of the Ensemble Micrologus. It is a pity in light of the vividness of the recording that the (uncredited) medieval illustrations of the Robin and Marion geste which cover the CD booklet are pixilated almost out of existence and lose much of their original impact. For those of you who like to sample tracks, please note that the track divisions are those denoted by the red Roman numerals rather than the black Arabic ones.

D. James Ross

L’ars nova di magister Antonio Zacara da Teramo
Ensemble Micrologus
68:41
Baryton CDM0023 (© 2008)

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]s it possible that the music by up to three shady figures spanning the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries is actually by the same man? The programme notes of the present CD by Goffredo Esposti hedge their bets, but it is amusing to think that the papal singer whose works made it into the Old Hall Manuscript was as also responsible for virtuosic instrumental music in the Faenza Codex as well as frankly erotic Italian ditties. All the more remarkable when we learn that the Zacara ‘Doctus in musicis’, rather bluntly represented in an initial illustration in the Codex Squarcialupi suffered from serious phocomelia, the deformity of limbs exhibited by Thalidomide victims. In addition to presenting sacred music, similar in style to Machaut, in a wonderfully ‘forward’ head-voice style, sometimes in conjunction with brass, the Ensemble Micrologus are also in a position to give us some instrumental music, one piece a stunning duet between positive organ and organetto.

And then there are the splendid ballate  and caccia, with their evocative verse, possibly also by the composer as he features in many texts either by name or in elaborately coded terms, which are given wonderfully gritty performances by Micrologus. If the intonation just occasionally falls victim to the forthright performance style in a couple of the sacred pieces and the recorded sound is rather immediate and brittle in some tracks, the Ensemble’s vision of Zacara’s works is compelling, and the interplay of voices and instruments stunningly convincing. So whether the group has conflated the work of up to three contemporary composers, or more likely to my mind introduced a single remarkable eclectic, transcendent and exuberant figure to the musical world, they have done us a great service with this CD.

D. James Ross

Sex, lies and… musical tales in 16th-century Venice
67:41
Baryton CDM0027 (© 2014)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his Venetian Carnival repertoire seems ideally suited to the versatility and forthright presentational style of Ensemble Micrologus, and indeed most of it is highly engaging and irresistibly evocative of the seamier side of Renaissance Venice. Only a couple of times in the more decorous part-music are there moments of uncomfortable intonation – it is hard to imagine that even in their unguardedly raucous moments the citizens of the Pearl of the Adriatic would have sung out of tune! Elsewhere an engagingly organic treatment of these popular tunes, with a galaxy of unusual instruments including bray harp, sordellina and buttafoco, merging in and out of the ensemble sound brings them vividly to life. Various sound effects, vocal interpolations and ‘informal percussion’ further enhance the ‘live’ and lively impression of this CD. The pieces are arranged into themed groups such as a Lanzo/Scaramella collection and a sequence celebrating the ‘rolling pin and the bread loaf’ in both of which the Ensemble lets its hair down to enjoy in full the obvious doubles entendres  of the texts. This is a joyous recording in which the performers manage to capture the risqué playfulness and folky virtuosity of this repertoire on CD, providing a useful antidote to any overdose of San Marco-based polychorality. This is the sort of music the Venetians enjoyed in the streets during Carnival time, and in many ways it provides a usefully scurrilous counterbalance to the more serious aspects of this multi-faceted and remarkable city state – also colourfully invoked on the accompanying visual material which is based on Canaletto’s representation of the magnificent Bucintoro.

D. James Ross