Скачать или смотреть The Garden of Zephirus

Medieval love-poets had only to mention the name of Zephirus, the god of the West Wind, to evoke the keenest desires of courtly society: the passion for clean colours, clear sounds and fresh odours; the longing to ride into the fields bearing a hawk or to sit by a castle window-seat and muse in the breeze. Above all Zephirus was associated with Springtime and youth—so much so that the fifteenth-century Le Jardin des nobles makes Zephirus the husband of ‘Youth … the goddess of flowers’.
It is this freshness and candour which pervades so much of the music composed and performed during the period covered by this record: the decades from c1400–c1440. It is certainly there in the poetry. Several of the songs recorded here celebrate that quality of youth, or jeunesse, which the fifteenth century understood as a mixture of joyfulness, candour, amorous bearing and precocious wisdom—a combination so perfectly embodied in our pictures of a courtier carrying green branches and of an elegant young herald. In Mon cuer me fait tous dis penser, a rondeau set by the outstanding composer of the fifteenth century Guillaume Dufay (c1400– 1474), a lover praises his lady who is ‘young, fair, white as fleece, loving and wise in speech’—a ringing catalogue of the ideals of jeunesse, while the speaker in Francus de Insula’s Amours n’ont cure de tristresse laments that to be unlucky in love is, in effect, to be old and an exile from courtly festivities: ‘there is no mirth or amusement’, he bemoans, ‘except amongst glad-hearted young people’.
This jeunesse is also there in the music. There is an ebullient gaiety in Briquet’s Ma seul amour et ma belle maistresse and in the anonymous Je la remire, la belle which we do not often find in the more precious and self-conscious works of the fourteenth century. Yet fifteenth-century composers excel in capturing the candour and freshness which were so much admired by the courtiers of their day, and they are caught to perfection in Mon cuer me fait tous dis penser. It is impossible to imagine a fourteenth-century composer writing such a piece, not only because of the ‘modernity’ of the counterpoint (instantly familiar to any modern Western ear in a way that French counterpoint of the fourteenth century rarely is), but also because of the sheer candour of the work: each voice has a melody of simple yet ingratiating beauty; nothing is allowed to darken the harmony; nothing is extravagant or flamboyant.
In accordance with this ideal of jeunesse, songs were sometimes performed at court by the jeunes gens (especially the younger squires and pages) who were expected to entertain their princes. Once they arrived at court to receive their education these youthful attendants, constantly looking for presents and favours, soon learned that the first step to preferment was to make themselves noticed in the throng of the court. What better way to attract attention than a conspicuous display of musical talent? No doubt they performed with feeling, for it was their role as attendants upon a great lord which underpinned the literary convention of the lover beseeching his lady for a favour: