Guillaume de Machaut was the finest composer of the 14th century. Antony Pitts, Artistic Director of The Song Company, explores one of his most extraordinary manuscripts.

The September 2018 issue of Limelight Magazine features a celebration of Jørn Utzon's mighty Sydney Opera House, Composer of the Month Peter Sculthorpe, and much more.

The cult of courtly love revisited in exquisite performances.

Subtitled The Rise of English Polyphony 1270-1430, this latest recording from The Orlando Consort weaves a rich, stylistically diverse musical tapestry across nearly two centuries of early English polyphony. Originally formed in 1988 to explore repertoire from the period 1050-1550, the UK-based a cappella ensemble – currently comprising countertenor Matthew Venner, tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith and baritone Donald Greig – have occasionally branched out into contemporary music. Beneath the Northern Star finds them on home ground, featuring music by some of the leading lights of medieval English music such as Leonel Power and John Dunstaple, as well as lesser-known composers like Johannes Alanus, Thomas Damett, Robert Chirbury and the most prolific of all, Anonymous. All these motets and movements from mass settings are for three voices; the exception is the four-voice Credo from the Old Hall Manuscript which brings the recording to a close. The stylistic diversity is apparent in the variety of musical techniques, not just from composer to composer but from within different periods of a single composer’s career. Many of these devices are easy to hear once you know what you’re listening for. The second track, the anonymous Stella maris nuncuparis uses the rondellus technique,…

★★★★☆ Richard Gill opens medieval windows on the sacred and profane. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Like the greatest innovators, poet and composer Guillaume Machaut (c. 1300-1377) was thoroughly versed in the language of past masters. One of the chief representatives of the medieval Ars nova and the latter-day trouvères, and renowned in his day and beyond, Machaut wove tales of courtly love, whose roots are in antiquity, with new-spun threads of startling melodic, rhythmic and harmonic originality. Decades of recordings by the Clemencic Consort, the Deller Consort and the like have in recent times immeasurably enhanced a contemporary reputation which still rests chiefly on one work, the brilliant and innovative Messe de Nostre Dame. Formed in 1988, the one-to-a-part male Orlando Consort stands with the Hilliard Ensemble in making a unique contribution to the on-going conversation with Machaut’s timeless music, of which this second volume in their complete edition for Hyperion. Where their first volume focused on the nine songs from Machaut’s masterpiece Le Voir Dit, The Dart of Love contains representatives from four genres favoured by Machaut: the ballade, the rondeau, the virelai and the motet. Availing themselves of the new performing edition The Complete Works of Guillaume de Machaut, countertenor Matthew Venner, tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith and baritone Donald Greig perform…