# 14th-century listening chain



## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

Greetings.

I've been so enjoying and learning from the 21st-century listening chain, and in that spirit, allow me to start a similarly-structured and intended thread for the 14th century.

I will start it off with Machaut motets; this version by The Hilliard Ensemble (ECM):











Kindest regards,
-09


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Both videos are blocked here...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Does this one works for you Mr brianvds ?


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

Pugg said:


> Does this one works for you Mr brianvds ?


That's beautiful


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

Never heard anything quite like this:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Omicron9 said:


> Greetings.
> 
> I've been so enjoying and learning from the 21st-century listening chain, and in that spirit, allow me to start a similarly-structured and intended thread for the 14th century.
> 
> ...


The Machaut is extremely sober, inward looking, stripped of blood and guts, austere to the point of being monastic. These are not all religious songs by the way. I feel as though I'm listening to singers without bodies - though what they do is so beautiful, abstractly beautiful, it has its own sort of hypnotic allure. I can't make out the words, it may as well be vocalise, they don't seem to believe in prima le parole! In the past I've been bothered by the balances, David James' voice can attract my ear and the lower voices can sound muddy below. But this time listening to it has been a pleasure, despite the absence of any instruments and the similarity of all the textures. It shows how good the music is!

Oxbridge Machaut.

I'll propose something when more people have had a chance to hear the two things already on the table.


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

Hmmm..... blocked.... working for me here in the US, but in case this is helpful, here are the URLs:


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Tallisman said:


> Never heard anything quite like this:


Such mesmerizing music. I love how the very first harmony contains a tritone (between tenor and soprano). There's always a bit of guesswork when one encounters a B-natural in medieval music; conventional wisdom is that these were usually altered to B-flat in performance even when not notated in the score (not that scores were terribly precise in Pérotin's time), but this was not consistently adhered to by the 14th century. I see that the score transcription in the video has preemptively flatted all of the Bs by putting B-flat into the key signature. So it's possible that the B-flat in the tenor might not have consistently been so in 14th century performance, and therefore wouldn't have created a tritone with the soprano. But even if the tenor sings B-natural rather than B-flat, it would just create a tritone with the bass rather than the soprano. So no matter how you sing it, there's no avoiding the devil's interval. Awesome.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Omicron9 said:


> Hmmm..... blocked.... working for me here in the US, but in case this is helpful, here are the URLs:


These are also blocked.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Pugg said:


> Does this one works for you Mr brianvds ?


Yup, that one works - lovely stuff.


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