Reviewing this CD is something of a sentimental journey for me.
My copy of the original, then brand-new release was bought for
me in Tower Records on Piccadilly in London by a very dear friend
and has been an anchor of my admittedly rather meagre medieval
collection ever since.
L’Oiseau-Lyre was
a bit like Decca’s answer to the Archiv label, full of interesting
repertoire played on original or authentic instruments and rich
with an aura of responsibly applied research. The original release
had notes by Philip Pickett and listings of musical sources,
plus the instruments used and their makers. I’m glad to see
that the full vocal texts plus translations have been kept in,
but while Andrew Stewart’s notes are well written and useful
I can’t really see what was wrong with the original ones. The
cover picture is now the more colourful but misplaced ‘Peasant
Wedding Feast’ by Pieter Breughel, where the original had a
more universally applicable illustration: Drunkenness from
a fourteenth-century manuscript ‘Treatise on the Seven Vices’.
It’s a kind of dumbing down in my view – not to any disastrous
extent I admit, but scholars will have to look elsewhere if
they want to know more about the deeper background to the music
on this re-release.
The Feast of
Fools was a real medieval event, held somewhere between
Christmas and Epiphany and often on New Year’s Day, so you could
say that parts of the tradition are alive today as a kind of
secular remnant – fused with those from pagan times of course,
before any Druids write in to complain. The idea of the feast
was the inversion of status: the functions of the upper echelons
of the church being taken by their inferiors such as the lower
clergy, choirboys and the like. Using contemporary 13th
century manuscripts which describe such events, Philip Pickett
made a selection of the music which would have been used, or
abused, during the kind of mock services and ceremonies which
took place. Many of the pieces are performed straight, with
wonderful renditions of classic pieces such as Perotin’s Salvatoris
hodie. The ‘desecrated’ music on the disc includes the plainchant
which becomes increasingly unruly during The Drinking Bout
in the Cathedral Porch. This is still great fun, though
now sounds mildly self-conscious and rather gentle. Almost as
‘shocking’ and equally raucous is the Kyrie asini or
“Ass’s Kyrie” in which the parts of the mass would have ended
with an imitation of a donkey’s braying, and culminating in
the congregation braying in response to the final Ite missa
est. There are some fun animal noises elsewhere in the Mass
of the Asses, Drunkards and Gamblers, and plenty of other
drunken singing, lively drumming and danceable tunes. The out
of tune Verbum patris hodie from the second set of ‘Music
from the Office’ is truly excruciating.
For those of you who
are not so interested in the intricate formalities and formalised
proceedings of medieval church services, this recording serves
up some remarkable and entertaining insights by showing some of
the anti-rituals which were used by the lower church classes to
blow off steam. The instrumental and vocal performances are all
filled with character, and are expertly high spirited and as spiritually
entertaining as a papal tickle-stick. This disc was a top recommendation
in 1992, and, as nothing has changed, makes a very welcome return.
Dominy Clements
New London
Consort/Philip Pickett 
