Loyset Compere, Magnificat, Motets and Chansons (Hyperion)Loyset Compere might not be considered the very greatest of Renaissance composers now but in his day he was worthy of being mentioned in literally the same breath as his finest contemporaries in Josquin's lament on the death of Ockeghem,
Accoutrez vouus d'habits de deuil:
Josquin, Brumel, Pierson, Compere,
(Clothe yourself in deepest mourning,
Josquin, Brumel, Pierre de la Rue, Compere)
His music is still heard nearly 600 years after his time, too, and that must be regarded as a success.
Having not enjoyed the Orlando Consort's last disc, The Dart of Love, chansons by Machaut, as much as I'd hoped, it might have been a bit of a risk to immediately get the next one but Compere does the things one had hoped of Machaut and, anyway, the continual ordering of discs like these seems to be a habit I can't break.
The opening Magnificat is a major and glorious thing conjured from the four parts, each part of equal value but, in our age at least, one can't help but follow the top line of the counter tenor, here Matthew Venner, as it travels the celestial sphere pictured on the rather taking cover.
After the motet we are led straight into the chansons, which are a further instalment of the endless poetry of destitute anguish suffered by the love-struck poets of the C15th. In those days there was either a never-ending supply of ravishingly beautiful women or a cult for this genre of heart-broken complaint at the fate of the distracted lover. I suspect there wasn't always an object of admiration but a fashion for this forlorn heartache that poets could cater for in well-practiced hyperbole.
Mes pensees ne me lessent une heure is nearly 12 minutes of intricacy that could happily wind on for as many hours as it takes such interminable grief to be assuaged. It convinces completely with its elaborate explication of such beautiful pain, the sheer length it goes to. Une plaisant fillette ung matin se leva is somewhat bawdier in content, not necessarily observing all the expectations of C21st gender politics but the economically told tale is still as pertinent today when a delightful girl happens upon a man at arms.
The notes provide some background to Loyset Compere, the most useful to me being that his first name has three syllables, thus Lo-y-set, but it comes too late for me as I will always call him Loy-set. The big news, though, and I'm surprised it wasn't headlines in all the newspapers, is that recent research now puts Josquin's date of birth at least 10 years later than 1440, which it had been set at. I'm glad I know that.
It's unlikely that anything will ever replace the Deploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem, quoted above as my very favourite piece from this period but if the notes tell why Compere is not quite admired alongside Josquin for technical reasons, this disc is one that represents the period very well. My next project is to line up these composers on my shelves in chronological order so that I might appreciate who owed what to who else. It remains a glorious period, though, and I owe much to the concert by the Ensemble Clement Jannequin in Portsmouth Cathedral some 25 years ago or more and albums like The Castle of Fair Welcome by Gothic Voices. If not for them, I might still think of Monteverdi as Early Music, which is a bit like thinking Manchester is in the North.