p h o Graindelavoix t o © directed by Björn Schmelzer K o e n Anne-Kathryn Olsen, soprano B r Carine Tinney, soprano o o s Razek-François Bitar, alto Tomàs Maxé, alto Albert Riera, tenor Andrés Miravete, tenor Marius Peterson, tenor Arnout Malfliet, bass www.graindelavoix.be Recorded in Beaufays (Église de Saint-Jean l’Évangeliste), Belgium, on 9-12 October 2017 Engineered by Alexandre Fostier Recording supervised by Eugénie De Mey Editing: Alexandre Fostier and Björn Schmelzer Produced by Graindelavoix Executive producer: Carlos Céster Editorial direction: Carlos Céster Editorial assistance: María Díaz, Mark Wiggins English supervision: Anne-Kathryn Olsen and With thanks to Église de Beaufays, André Straps, Alex Fostier, Eugénie De Mey, Ria Van den Acker, Mark Wiggins Jan Corteel, Édouard Fouré Caul-Futy, Eef Proesmans, Isabelle Deleu, Xavier Vandamme, Łukasz Serwi n´ski, Translations: Pierre Élie Mamou (FRA) and Angelo De Simone, Bert Timmermans, Mat Steyvers, Timothy Foubert, Silvie Moors, Anne-Kathryn Olsen, Susanne Lowien (DEU) Arnout Malfliet, Koen Broos, Margarida Garcia, Carlos Céster, María Díaz, Mark Wiggins, Design: Rosa Tendero Katrijn Degans and Willem Van Vooren. B.S. © 2018 note 1 music gmbh p h The Liberation of the Gothic o t o Florid polyphony by Thomas Ashwell and © F John Browne – singing the Virgin “à l’anglaise” r a n ç o i s M John Browne (fl.c.1480-1505) a u 01 Salve regina 17:51 g e r / R Thomas Ashwell (c.1478-c.1527)) o y a Missa Ave Maria u m 02 Gloria 9:53 o n 03 Credo 11:34 t 04 Sanctus 9:56 05 Agnus Dei 10:56 John Browne 06 Stabat mater 19:36 After a four year’s residency at Fondation Royaumont near Paris, Graindelavoix would like to thank Francis Maréchal, François Naulot, Cathérine Huet and the team for their structural and warm support in the ensemble’s exploration of fascinating new musical repertories from the 12th to the 17th century, from Cypriot Vespers over Dufay to Gesualdo. Graindelavoix closes its residency with this special goodbye to Royaumont: a brand new recording of flamboyant English polyphony by all too neglected composers Browne and Ashwell. This programme was prepared, produced and premiered at Royaumont (October 2017) and recorded soon after. Graindelavoix has been in residency at Fondation Royaumont (2015-2018). This recording was made in partnership with Fondation Royaumont and Comité Henry Goüin. 4 5 ENGLISH ENGLISH Virgin Mary. The sculptures, unlike the rich ornamen - distinctive and formless shapes intertwine, all submit - ly connected to the most profound Christian mystery, tation, were almost completely destroyed during the ted to folds and S-curves. Binski claims that this was the Incarnation, that led to all kinds of artistic, philo - English Reformation. Interestingly enough, these the material language to evoke the Virgin Mary – not sophic, and speculative physical experiments. provocative and sensually ornamented zones were as a person, but as a personification of an event. The Ely Lady Chapel is probably one of these: a spared. Is it because these fluid forms and shapes People entered this building to be healed or medici - liminally connected space, like an organ or a womb, The Liberation of the Gothic escape a clear meaning? They don’t seem to commu - nally “sweetened” by the Virgin Mary. Finally, Binski simultaneously having an independence of its own. nicate anything defined, anything that could be for - launches his hypothesis: were these curvy ogee arch - Is it this relative independence that made it possible by Björn Schmelzer mally problematic or provocative, as if they open up es and the slightly fleshy consistency of the architec - to explore ideas and techniques outside the normal to another level of meaning of the event itself. And ture all a communicative vehicle for the event of fem - symbolic order of the system? Does this explain its yet, isn’t this precisely how medieval culture was at ininity? Was an architecture being produced in Ely relatively excessive formal features, also noticeable Perhaps one worthy forerunner of the art and litera - its most provocative? By opening up a patriarchal that would make people subliminally aware of the in those remarkable if slightly – even for us now – ture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century England – system of defined meaning in order to create spaces Virgin Mary in her physical presence? This is a very unreal musical compositions made at the height of exemplified by the dynamic combination of Alice-in- of ambiguity, it would be possible to make audible attractive notion and lends itself to the stimulating Catholicism in England, around 1500? Might it be Wonderland-transformations and the climatology of musical works of the same ambiguity, not just idea of trying to make sense of the extremely com - possible to extract a kind of logic or grammar of this JMW Turner – can be seen in the articulation of space: according to the traditional Aristotelian hylemor - plex woven texture of English polyphony as will have “other” space, expressed in the fluid plasticity of in English Gothic architecture and in the complex phic matrix – by which active form is pressed onto been sung in those spaces up to 150 years later. polyphonic compositions made for performance in meshwork of English polyphony. If Walter Pater is passive matter – but according to matter itself which Fourteenth-century English scholars were the Lady Chapels? right in claiming that all art aspires to the condition of has the capacity to move and shape: the articulation first to popularize a new form of thinking: secundum music, it is perhaps in music and in the places where of pure plasticity. imaginationem , or, in the words of Geoffrey Chaucer, it has been performed in history that we can find the The Lady Chapel was built as a peculiar annex to “demonstracion in myn imagynacioun”. A conse - 4 origin of English art: infinitely repeated in other the huge cathedral with its magnificent octagonal quence of this was the exploration of what we now shapes and forms in later times. crossing tower, in order to stimulate the veneration of would call speculative or virtual concepts. All this can be explored through the music recorded In a short but instructive documentary, the the Virgin Mary. This sounds like the official function, Undoubtedly, Gothic architecture – seen as one of here: in many ways it is highly representative of British medievalist and art historian Paul Binski leads but is it that simple? The Lady Chapel seems to be a the most powerful machines of marvel – con - English – especially Marian – repertory of the period. us through the fourteenth-century Lady Chapel of marvel of the small form, of infinitely undulating and tributed to the articulation of this speculative think - The principal work is the breathtaking Missa Ave Ely Cathedral, a space which is quintessentially of the fractalized little shapes. It was constructed more or ing, as did music. Maria by Thomas Ashwell, probably one of the most English Decorated Style, a style that would have a less at the same time as the main cathedral in 1321 Thus, in the solid patriarchal system of Western exciting landmarks in polyphony. major influence on the European Gothic of the two and completed 28 years later. Binski shows how the Christianity, an important breach was made, one To this mass have been added a pair of motets following centuries.* This subject is elaborated upon Lady Chapel is a prodigy of compression and intensi - which had been signalled a century earlier by female by a composer from one generation earlier, John in Binski’s book, Gothic wonder , Yale UP: 2014, pp 205- ty: a contrast to the expanse of the Gothic cathedral mystic literature and women’s movements such as Browne, the most prominent figure appearing in the 214). Binski notes the chapel’s incredible ornamenta - itself and an event of extreme elasticity in propor - those of the beguines, and was now experimented major late fifteenth-century manuscript of English tion: the erotic, curved, serpentine lines (long before tions – small things become large, and vice-versa. with in perceptive and sensitive materials. polyphony, the Eton Choirbook – a collection of most - William Hogarth!) forming the ogee arches that Everything in the chapel seems to be covered Paradoxically, it is a theological mystery, like the ly Marian compositions produced for performance at accompany sculpted scenes of the miracles of the with foliage, seaweed, or hair; things seem to move, miraculous insemination of the Annunciation, direct - Eton College. The Choirbook originally featured fif - 6 7 ENGLISH ENGLISH teen of Browne’s works, including the Salve regina and which is often used by Ashwell independently from The fact that this mass is written for the Feast of is an open window between the Angel and the Virgin Stabat mater recorded here. the two top voices. Together this gives the impression the Annunciation creates other interesting musical Mary, looking onto a busy Ghent street, articulating Very little is known about Ashwell: a chorister at of a large and striking tessitura, which can easily be cut implications. This Feast is probably the most impor - the transformation of noise into voice. Another St George’s Chapel, Windsor and then a singing clerk and arranged into higher, crystalline choirs or low, tant acoustical event of Christianity: the Angel Gabriel Annunciation scene, from 1523, by the Flemish at Tattershall College, Lincolnshire (where he might dark-sounding choirs. This offers a palette of diverse visits the Virgin Mary and announces that she will painter known as Frei Carlos, shows the marble col - have taught John Taverner – although this is historical sonorities and colours within which the texts can be conceive and give birth to the Son of God, Jesus umn, not as usual between angel and the Virgin, but speculation), he became choirmaster at Lincoln articulated, very often overflowing in endless melis - Christ.