MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Buy through MusicWeb from £12.00 postage paid.

Musicweb Purchase button

 

Thys Yool: A Medieval Christmas
Martin Best Ensemble/Martin Best
rec. Wyastone Leys, Monmouthshire, Wales, 4-5 May 1988. DDD. Ambisonic (UHJ encoded)
Booklet includes Modern English translations but not original Middle English, French and Latin texts.
NIMBUS NI5137 [64:07]

Experience Classicsonline



I: I sing today of Joy

Personent hodie (C14th, from Piæ Cantiones, 1582) [2:02]
II: Winter and Wassail

Judas and Wenceslas (C13th) [1:31]
Gautier de COINCY (c.1177-c.1236) Hyer Matin [5:07]
Miri it is (c.1225) [1:52]
Man mei longe (c.1250) [5:26]
Thys Yool (c.1396) [1:03]
Tapster, drynker (c.1450) [1:15]
Gautier de COINCY Ja pour Hyver [4:27]
III A Child is born

Gabriel from Heven-King (C13th) [2:26]
Chester Nuns’ Song (c.1425)[3:11]
Hail Mary full of grace (C15th) [4:11]
As I lay on Yoolis Night (C14th/15th) [3:39]
Edi be thu (late C13th) [2:09]
Richard de LEDREDE (fl. c.1320) Perperit Virgo [2:49]
IV Mary Mother, Queen of Heaven

O Virgo Splendens (C14th) [2:20]
Alfonso el Sabio of Castille (late C13th) Cantigas: Loor de Santa Maria [1:56]
Polorum Regina (C14th)[2:57]
Mariam matrem (C14th)[2:02]
V Mary’s Son, Goodwill on earth

I pray you all (late C14th)[2:09]
Ther is no rose (early C15th)[4:42]
Caligo terræ scinditur (early C14th)[2:01]
Princeps Pacis (C15th)[3:13]
VI Rebirth

Mors vitæ Propitia (conductus, c.1200)[1:17]

Those who have read my reviews of other recordings by the Martin Best Ensemble on Nimbus will have a fair idea what to expect: the blurb on the cover describes Best’s performing style as ‘renowned for its vivid authentic performance’ – by a fair degree, however, the ‘vivid’ part of that description prevails over the ‘authentic’, not that it’s any the worse for that. With bright recording to match, these performances will have a considerable appeal, perhaps rather more so than the earlier Martin Best CDs which I have reviewed: Cantigas of Santa Maria (NI5081); The Distant Love of the Troubadours (NI5544); The Last of the Troubadours (NI5261) and Forgotten Provence (NI5445) – in each case, click on the catalogue number for a link to the review. Christmas is, perhaps, a more potent link to the past than courtly love lyrics.

The rousing performance of the opening Personent hodie gets the programme off to a flying start; it comes from the 16th-century collection Piæ cantiones, but is doubtless much older than that. Personent will be a familiar tune to most listeners, as will the music of Judas and Wenceslas (track 2), another piece from Piæ cantiones which was ‘stolen’ for the wholly fictitious Victorian concoction which we know as Good King Wenceslas, but there is a wide variety of origins, themes and styles. Medieval English, Latin, Provençal, Catalan and Spanish all feature here.

Some of the English music offers medieval translations of Latin originals, such as Hail Mary (tr.4), a paraphrase of the Latin Ave Maria, the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary. Gabriel from Heven-King, a translation of Angelus ad Virginem (tr.9), relates to the same theme. This was a well-known piece in both English and Latin – Chaucer’s Miller makes the clerk Nicholas sing it ‘So swetely that all the chamber rong’ (Canterbury Tales, I, 3215-6) – and is to be found in several recordings of medieval Christmas music, including one which I recommended strongly enough this time last year to make it a Bargain of the Month (Gabriel’s Greeting, Sinfonye/Stevie Wishart, Hyperion Helios CDH55151 – see review). The Sinfonye recording is probably no more authentic, with its mixture of female voices and instruments as exotic as those employed by the Best Ensemble. Neither is unfaithful to the spirit of the music but the Helios scores in its significantly lower price and the greater fullness of the documentation – this Nimbus recording, like most of those in the Martin Best series, offers only translations, not the original texts.

Gabriel from Heven-King is not the only piece common to both recordings. With approximately 12 minutes of overlap between the two recordings, the question inevitably arises: if you bought the Hyperion last year on my recommendation, is there enough extra for me to recommend buying the Nimbus CD, too? Though the Hyperion remains the stronger recommendation, I have to say that the Nimbus is certainly very worthwhile.

Sinfonye restrict their attentions to medieval English Christmas music; Martin Best casts his net more widely. You may think a little too widely, since he concludes with Mors vitæ propitia (misprinted as propitiæ at one point in the booklet), a thirteenth-century French conductus intended for Easter (tr. 23). I’ve heard stranger things – carol services which ended with This joyful Eastertide, the one Easter carol to have survived generally – but it still strikes an odd note.

Some of the music, like Miri it is (tr. 4) and Man mei longe lives weene (tr.5) is less than cheerful – these two, some of the earliest poems in Middle English, stress the rigours of winter and the even greater rigours of the end of human life. They may not fit our cosy post-Victorian view of Christmas, but they remind us of the harsh realities of life which our ancestors had to deal with, as shown in the winter scenes in medieval books of hours or as described in the fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Gawain’s welcome at the castle of Haut Desert provides such a strong contrast to the miseries of his journey there. These performances prove that Martin Best and his Ensemble can cope with the thoughtful as well as the jolly.

Medieval France contributes its fair share of the music here, not surprisingly in view of the repertoire of the Martin Best Ensemble. Gautier de Coincy was a Provençal troubadour and his Hyer Matin (track 3), like As I lay on Yoolis night (tr.12), is a chanson d’aventure. Hyer Matin corresponds more nearly than the English piece to the features of such chansons in that the first half is about courtly love; only half way through does Gautier turn the tables and proclaim that lovers may sing of Mariete and Robardelle, he will sing of Mary and her Son. It’s a neat trick, until you find that it’s a common feature of troubadour song. Gautier doesn’t repeat the trick, however, in Ja pour Hyver (track 8) – he merely contrasts the misery of winter with the solace brought by the Virgin Mary and the birth of Jesus.

Whereas in the livelier works much use is made of the diverse array of accompanying instruments, these more reflective pieces receive appropriately more restrained treatment. Even Thys Yool (tr.6), the piece which gives its name to the whole collection, receives a comparatively restrained performance, appropriate to its status as a courtly love song, though the following Tapster, drynker (tr. 7) more than makes up.

Other music comes from Southern France and Catalonia, from the Llibre Vermell or Red Book of the Abbey of Montserrat – tracks 15 (O Virgo splendens), 17 (Polorum Regina) and 18 (Mariam Matrem). Worthwhile as they are, these pieces only scratch the surface of this collection – don’t be surprised if they tempt you to sample a larger selection. (I’m afraid I’m not familiar with any of the current recordings; my favourite version has been deleted.) The same is true of track 16, in praise of the Virgin Mary, from the Cantigas of King Alfonso ‘the Wise’ of Castille. Martin Best has recorded a selection of these on Nimbus NI5081 – see link in the first paragraph of this review – and there are further selections on Warner Apex (Joel Cohen, 2564 61924 2) and Naxos (8.553133, Ensemble Unicorn) both at budget price. Again, you’ll probably want to explore in greater depth the collection of this remarkable king, whose artistic interests sadly did not prevent his losing his kingdom. (Kings who patronise the arts tend not to have political success – Richard II of England is another case in point.)

The cover illustration, Brueghel’s Census at Bethlehem, adds to the appeal of an attractive and unusual Christmas recording. In fact, three of the Christmas CDs which have come my way this year have been out of the ordinary – Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band in 19th-century church-gallery style (Saydisc CD-SDL366), Red Byrd’s offering of Elizabethan Christmas Anthems (Amon Ra CD-SAR46), and this. None of them have been new recordings but all have been very worthwhile.

Brian Wilson

 

 

 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.