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Love Lyrics (Flanders to Italy c. 1500)
Capilla Flamenca
Eufoda 1369 [UK distributor Coda]

I am delighted to renew acquaintance with the Eufoda label, many years on since reviewing their EufLargeFile magnificent boxed set of Lassus, Isaac, des Prez, Ockeghem, Dufay etc :
- - This boxed set of ten CDs (also available separately) is accompanied by a learned and lovely book by Prof Ignace Bossuyt. Together they offer an excellent introduction to the intellectual and sensuous delights of Flemish Polyphony. .Until very recently the rich heritage of the Flemish polyphonists, which spread throughout Europe from the Low Countries, has not yet enjoyed a breakthrough comparable with the affection enjoyed by painters of the period. Bossuyt seeks to place Dufay, des Prez and Lassus on the same plane as the more familiar van Eyck and Bruegel. - - Bossyut's marvellously illustrated book is supported by ten CDs with representative mass movements and numerous motets by the forty composers chosen. The superb quality of the music throughout scotches the properly challenged notion of a canon of great composers, a dangerous concept which demands continual revision. De Monte, Rogier, Gombert, Obrecht all are represented by marvellous music. - -

The present selection of secular love lyrics from late-medieaval Europe, grouped as Love's Desire, Pleasure and Sorrow, has four singers close recorded with lute, violas da bamba and recorders.

Lovely singing and instrumental support, ringing the changes on instruments of the period, and on the recording giving a good feeling of space in the sympathetic acoustic of St Kammillus, Bierbeek, where they were recorded ealier this year. It should give unalloyed aural delight.

Full documentation, with the texts and translations set out in good sized print, black on white. Would that were ever so!

Peter Grahame Woolf