Guillaume de Machaut

A celebration of the pioneering early music label Archiv, offering 55CDs ranged across the label’s entire 66-year history. Beautiful presentation, original jacket sleeves and documentation to the customary high standards of the label.

In more ways than one, 2013 will be an Archiv Produktion year. The beloved Silver Label – the “Early Music Studio of Deutsche Grammophon”, as it was called for many years – is being revived in a big way, both in frontline and catalogue. In early April 2013 an event in Berlin is being held to mark this relaunch. New albums from choral group Tenebrae, Anna Prohaska and Giuliano Carmignola are being released in the first quarter to coincide with this occasion.

Simple, striking and strong: in gleaming silver with the large blue Archiv Logo embossed on all sides. A large onsert on the top and back of the box details contents and is illustrated with a packshot showing contents.

Original Jackets: starting with the austere yellow covers of the 1940s and 1950s gradually giving way to the great historical illustrations and images that featured up to the 1990s, when artists at last began to make an appearance (there were no artist photos in the 1950s!)

The 180-page full-colour book has articles by journalist Nicholas Anderson, and “memoirs” by former directors of Archiv, Prof. Andreas Holschneider and Dr. Peter Czornyj, and Executive Producer, Marita Prohmann.

The book features many rare photos from Archiv recording sessions, as well as other memorabilia.

The fourteenth century was a time of important innovations; notation harmony, polyphony and developments in rhythm. Alta Musica was founded in 1985 to promote the research and performance of medieval wind music. They now perform all kinds of medieval music ranging from music of the troubadors to masses.

Machaut's extraordinary Messe de Nostre Dame was not only the first complete mass setting in history, but also the first whose composer can be identified, making it emblematic of the Ars Nova style of the 14th century. In this recording, the Orlando Consort performs the mass in parallel with a work by Tarik O'Regan (born in 1978) which was inspired by it. Scattered Rhymes links two texts from the same period as Machaut's mass, one by Petrarch, the other an anonymous English poem. Both of them subtly combine earthly and divine love, while the music blends polyphonic tradition and contemporary inspiration.

Scattered Rhymes was commissioned by the Spitalfields Festival and first performed with The Joyful Company of Singers. O'Regan's Douce dame jolie was commissioned by the Orlando Consort. Super flumina by Gavin Bryars was commissioned by the National Centre for Early Music,York. Ave Regina celorum by Guillaume Dufay is sung from an edition by Gareth Curtis.

Two-time British Composer Award winner Tarik O'Regan was educated at Oxford University and completed his postgraduate studies at Cambridge. He now divides his time between Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts, and New York City, where he has held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard.

Gavin Bryars, born in Yorkshire, was first of all a jazz bassist and pioneer of free improvisation with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. His early iconic works The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), both enjoyed major recording success. He has written extensively for early music performers such as the Hilliard Ensemble, Red Byrd and Trio Medieval, and for the Estonian National Male Choir and the Latvian Radio Choir.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir's repertoire ranges from Gregorian chant to 20th-century music, with special emphasis on Estonian composers like Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis. Many of the Choir's recordings have received the highest critical acclaim, including 5 Grammy nominations and a Grammy Award (Arvo Pärt, Da Pacem).Their conductor, Paul Hillier enjoys close creative relationships with a number of contemporary composers, most notably Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. In 2007, he prepared Stockhausen's Stimmung with Theatre of Voices for a UK tour and subsequent recording.

Since its formation in 1988, the award-winning Orlando Consort has been hailed as the most imaginative champion of vocal music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; it now records exclusively for harmonia mundi USA.

Guillaume de Machaut was the most accomplished and versatile composer of the 14th century.A member of the household of King John of Bohemia from 1323, Machaut later became a canon of Reims, where he resided from 1340 until his death. His four-part Messe de Notre Dame is the earliest known polyphonic setting of the mass by a single composer. His musical works include 19 lays, 42 ballades, 21 rondeaux and 33 virelais. First recording of Loyauté... Machaut’s first lay, in its entirety.