Machaut

Chanticleer turns to the fourteenth century’s most towering figure, Guillaume de Machaut, presenting both faces of his remarkable career: the devout cleric of Reims Cathedral and the courtly poet-composer of secular love song. The album’s centerpiece is the Messe de Nostre Dame, one of the era’s only surviving polyphonic mass settings by a single composer, its hocketing rhythms and sonorous blocks of sound still astonishing nearly seven centuries later. Alongside it, Chanticleer performs Machaut’s ballades, rondeaux, virelais and motets — intricate, pun-laden love songs written for his noble patrons, brought to life with an improvisatory, historically-informed approach to ornamentation and color.

Chanticleer
Tim Keeler – director & countertenor