The polyphonic plenitude of the Renaissance. Missa pro defunctis by Charles d’Argentil, motets by Jehan Barra, Lamentations by Claudin de Sermisy.
Without giving up the contrapuntal excellence and mastery of their predecessors from the Flemish-French School, these three composers have in common a more homophonic writing, favouring the quality of prosody. This aesthetic choice gives their works a fulfilled sound, which will remain the ideal of Renaissance composers.
Between tradition and modernity, the Notre-Dame School of Paris is one of the most fascinating artistic phenomena in the history of music. Perotin, presumed to be the leading master of this parisian repertoire, lays here the foundations of the Western melodic balance.
Fascinated by these music he has been practicing for 4 decades, Dominique Vellard composed 3 motets that fit perfectly into this innovative medieval repertoire.
This project “LEGACIES” was born from the desire of a family to revisit the music that fed us, the repertoires that were decisive in our future choices, those that continue to fill us with enthousiasm. Our experiences allowed us to reflect on the differences and similarities that we could find in our work, all those clear narratives and defined rituals that govern the “here and now”, but also all that is done in subtle, implicit, indirect and unconscious ways. This creates an improbable assemblage where styles and centuries mix, dialog and play together a sometimes iconoclastic, but always joyful partition.
Simultaneously with the medieval novels, a lyrical poetry in vernacular developed in the south and the north of France: Troubadours and Trouvères. From the beginning, in trouvère’s works, poetry and music are closely linked, giving rise to an entirely monodic secular art. Courteous Love is at the center of the important corpus they have bequeathed us. The worship of the woman – which extends and sometimes mingles with that of the Virgin Mary – is the main theme of these graceful poems.