Lassus: Bonjour mon coeur

Album review

The movement to record Renaissance music in ways that illustrate its context has mostly bypassed Orlande de Lassus up to now. This is partly because his vast output is hard to get a grip on. Lassus was arguably music's first international star, and he was capable of bringing to his employers (mostly the Duke of Bavaria, already something of a cultural crossroads in the late sixteenth century) music from all around the continent. In the secular realm he wrote French chansons, Italian madrigals, and German songs modeled on both of these, and he influenced composers from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. This range of inspiration and influence is the subject of this Belgian release by the always enjoyable Capilla Flamenca and its superbly named countertenor, Marnix de Cat. Not that you would know that from the structure of the program, which falls into a very loose "day-parts of love" classification. But the singing is gorgeous throughout, and any lover of madrigal-type pieces will enjoy the performance of the moody French chanson La nuict froide et sombre, as well as other familiar Lassus pieces. The real attraction here is the way the album shows how, in the secular realm as well as the sacred, musicians even in the increasingly individualistic late sixteenth century tended to think in terms of chains of compositions. Only about half the program is by Lassus himself; the rest is by composers he inspired, or, in the case of the Pierre Sandrin chanson Doulce mémoire, who inspired him. The range of pieces associated with the chanson Bonjour mon coeur is especially interesting. Lassus' limpid setting of this deceptively simple poem by Pierre de Ronsard apparently became a hit and was manipulated by other song composers, keyboardists, and composers more oriented to sacred music who fitted the material with sacred texts, including Lassus himself after his employer's theology began to shift toward the counter-reformation. Another interesting and quite rare piece is the dialogic chanson Hola Caron (track 21), representing a conversations between Charon, the boatman of the river Styx, and a soul who has died of love and is thus not to be allowed to cross; it is a quasi-dramatic setting for two groups of voices, clearly influenced by the ideas in the realm of the Italian madrigal that would eventually lead to the creation of opera. The booklet notes by Ignace Bossuyt take some concentration (they begin with the somewhat tangential counter-reformation issue), but effectively introduce Lassus and his musical surroundings. The notes and texts appear in Dutch, German, French, and English. A treat for madrigal lovers of all stripes.

© TiVo