Having given this reissue a ‘thumbs up’ recommendation,
I’m going to qualify it at the very outset by warning that
Léonin’s style may well not be to the taste even
of those readers who like medieval music and who have purchased
some or all of the Helios reissues of Gothic Voices’ recordings
of medieval repertoire. Those who have already sampled and liked
Léonin - perhaps having heard his best-known work,
Viderunt
omnes (track 7 on this CD) - may buy with total confidence.
It’s almost impossible to describe the music of Léonin
and the school of composers who followed him; if you saw the
first of the programmes on sacred music on BBC4 some time ago,
however, you will have some idea of what it sounds like. Otherwise,
I recommend that you listen to some or all of the extracts from
this CD, available on the
Hyperion
website. You’ll also be able to download the booklet
from this source, containing helpful notes by Mark Everist.
Essentially, Léonin takes the simple plainchant and elaborates
it - the beginning of the process which came to be known as polyphony.
Many later medieval examples of polyphony became so complex that
the decoration, often set to words added to the original text
and sometimes irrelevant to it, overshadowed the melody and the
words became lost in such a jumble that both reformers and the
Roman Catholic Council of Trent legislated to simplify matters.
Legend has it, apocryphally, that Palestrina’s
Missa
Papæ Marcelli narrowly saved the day for polyphony.
Léonin’s music is far less complex than that. There
are three strands: the choral plainchant, sung here by the Cappella
Amsterdam, and two solo voices, John Potter and Richard Wistreich,
which weave in and out of each other in the more elaborate sections.
Usually one voice moves slowly, the other more quickly, turning
single syllables into many, as in the best-known piece here,
viderunt
omnes, where the first syllables of
omnes and
Dominus and
the first three syllables of
revelavit are
extended.
The resulting sound must have had a major impact on the citizens
of Paris, where Léonin and subsequently Pérotin
were based at Notre Dame - probably comparable with jazz or rock
and roll in the 20
th century and with as many dissenting
establishment voices, too. To the modern ear the sound is soothing
but in the mid-to-late 12
th century it would have
seemed revolutionary.
We know very little about Magister Leoninus, as he was known;
he may have been Canon Leo of Notre Dame and he may have been
the poet after whom the Leonine form was named. Later generations
called his musical style
ars antiqua, in contrast with
later developments which came to be known as
ars nova.
It certainly didn’t sound old-fashioned, however, to his
contemporaries.
The performances here manage to convey something of the shock
of the new, though the singing of Messrs. Potter and Wistreich
is much smoother than on many of Red Byrd’s recordings.
They are well supported by Cappella Amsterdam in the full-choir
sections and well recorded by Hyperion.
Gary Higginson, reviewing Volume II (see below) thought the Capella
a little too closely recorded on this first CD and preferred
the sound accorded to Yorvox, in a different location, on the
sequel, but I was not at all troubled by this. The notes are
brief but informative.
Some of the works on this Helios CD are duplicated on David Munrow’s
Music
of the Gothic Era (DG Archiv 471 7312, 2 mid price CDs),
which offers
Viderunt omnes and
Pascha nostrum together
with two other Léonin items, two works by the other Notre
Dame composer Pérotin, and several other items from roughly
the same period. Several of Munrow’s practices are now
regarded as unscholarly - the inevitable fate of those first
in the field - but still very enjoyable. I am no more likely
to dispose of any of his recordings with the Early Music Consort
than I am to dispose of my 2-volume Skeat edition of Langland’s
Piers
Plowman, though its text has long been superseded by the
Athlone and Schmidt editions.
Another DG Archiv recording, from the Orlando Consort, also offers
the music of Léonin (no overlaps this time) and Pérotin
(477 5504, mid price). There is also a Naxos recording of Léonin
and Pérotin which Gary Higginson strongly recommended
(8.557340 - see
review).
Best of all, a second volume of Léonin’s music currently
languishes in Hyperion’s archives, available only as a
CDR to special order (CDA67289). I imagine that its fate rests
upon sales of the reissue of Volume I; if you would like it to
be generally available again, as I would, you know what to do.
Where Volume I concentrates on the festal texts with
Alleluia,
the second contains music for Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.
Having listened to that second volume in lossless flac sound,
courtesy of Hyperion’s fledgling download site,
I can recommend it to those in tune with the idiom even more
strongly than Volume I. I am completely in accord with Gary Higginson
who wrote of Volume II: “For me then this is an outstanding
release where scholarship and superb vocal musicianship go hand
in hand. I am left in admiration of the entire project” -
see
review.
I opened this review with a sideways glance at the wonderful
series of recordings which Gothic Voices made for Hyperion. The
high quality of the current recording of Léonin provides
an excellent opportunity to remind readers of them, starting
with their ground-breaking recording of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen’s
music,
A Feather on the Breath of God, still available
at full price and worth every penny (CDA66039) or in a specially
priced 3-CD set of Award Winners (CDS44251/3). Hildegard’s
music comes from the generation before Léonin but, if
anything, sounds even more hypnotic to the modern ear. If you
don’t already have that recording, place your order at
the same time as (I hope) you purchase this Léonin CD.
If you want to hear how Pérotin developed the style of
Léonin, try one or both of the DG Archiv recordings, or
the Naxos. The one work attributed to him,
Presul nostri temporis which
is included on Gothic Voices
The Spirits of England and France
1, another budget-price Hyperion Helios CD, is not one of
his best works - if, indeed, it is by him - but the CD as a whole
is as recommendable as the current Léonin disc (CDH55281
- see my
review).
Brian Wilson
Red Byrd (John
Potter, Richard Wistreich); Cappella Amsterdam 
