Rue, P: Doleo super te

To complete a triptych of recordings presenting an alternative view of performance practice from across a century of Franco-Flemish polyphony, Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix now turn their attention to music by Alexander Agricola and his contemporaries in Cecus.

Following on from their two earlier albums, Joye and La Magdalene, Cecus concerns itself with music associated with blind players (notably two fiddlers from Bruges) and memory and commemoration (laments on the deaths of Agricola and Johannes Ockeghem) coming from the chapel of Philippe le Beau and Juana of Castile.

Alexander Agricola’s own musical world – and especially Cecus non judicat de coloribus [The Blind Do Not Distinguish Colours] – crosses the border between theory and practice, between flamboyant experience and rational construction and constantly evokes blindness in relation to memory and written or improvised music, but also in connection with those songs of mourning.

Graindelavoix’s new CD for Glossa promises polyphony in sharply-articulated, richly-coloured performances, provided with athletic vocal gestures by Schmelzer and his Antwerp-based ensemble of musicians from Spain, Estonia, the UK, France and Belgium.

Margaret was the daughter of the emperor Maximilian I of Austria and Mary of Burgundy. Music was played daily in her court and she played several instruments. She left a legacy of two songbooks and a book of Basses dances, all preserved in the former Burgundian library, now part of the Belgian Royal Library in Brussels. 500 years on, we can catch an echo of the joys and sorrows in her life.

Pierre de la Rue was one of the most prolific composers of his generation and is thought to have been born in Tournai, a city ruled by France in the fifteenth century and now the main town of the current Belgian province of Hainaut. Little is known about his musical employment but in 1492, he was employed in the chapel of Maximilian, the future Holy Roman Emperor.