Aime qui vouldra
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€ 22 - check our reductions
The Leuven Chansonnier does not contain any attribution to composers. Based on the concordances in other manuscripts, the (supposed) composers of about half of the songs in the Leuven Chansonnier can be traced. Researching authorship remains an attractive subject, but the anonymity of certain works is not always proportional to their high quality. Things like copyright make us look at authorship differently, whereas this romantic idea was less important in the 15th century.
Other details were also not immediately written down with the musical notes, but were considered common sense by the composer for the audience or performers: text placement, tempi, dynamics and balance, underlying messages in the poetry, literary references and symbolism, etc.
All these small but essential elements are covered in this second concert from the marathon series in which compositions from the Leuven Chansonnier are juxtaposed with works by Du Fay and Binchois.
Rare songbook continues to inspire
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Voices of Passion
The Leuven Chansonnier: 50 gems in 4 concerts
Leuven and polyphony have long been closely connected. Together with the Alamire Foundation, we put this tradition and the contemporary knowledge and performance practice in the spotlight during the Voices of Passion festival. The 2024 edition will focus entirely on the Leuven Chansonnier, the Flemish masterpiece from the late fifteenth century which contains a treasure trove of polyphonic music.
When an old, unknown book was presented to the Alamire Foundation in 2015 for examination, the manuscript exceeded all expectations. With the help of various disciplines, such as musicology, heraldry, art history, textile history and linguistics, researchers have gained an insight into the manuscript’s provenance and history in recent years. It turned out to be a late fifteenth-century songbook containing a treasure trove of polyphonic music: forty-nine French chansons, preceded by Walter Frye’s religious motet Ave regina caelorum.
The extraordinary find caused a stir in the arts and heritage world; with the chansonnier recognised as a Flemish masterpiece in 2018. The songs embody the pinnacle of fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish polyphony to French medieval lyrics, an exceptional discovery.
The small songbook was named Leuven Chansonnier, after the city where the Alamire Foundation resides and the chansonnier is kept. After a world premiere in New York and conferences, lectures and performances in Tokyo, Ambronay, Rome, Berlin, York and Antwerp, the Sollazzo Ensemble led by vielle player Anna Danilevskaia and the Sollazzo Ensemble will bring all fifty compositions from the songbook in various line-ups to conclude this major research and recording project.
The musicians of the young vocal-instrumental Sollazzo - the ensemble currently mesmerizing the international music world - will be in residence at the House of Polyphony with the Alamire Foundation during the Voices of Passion festival and will perform all fifty chansons in an exceptional concert marathon.
Four unique concerts that allow you to discover a fifteenth-century musical gem note-by-note. A once-in-a-lifetime experience!
More info
artistic direction Anna Danilevskaia with Marie Théoleyre (soprano), Franziska Fleischanderl (psalterio), Christoph Sommer (lute), Floris De Rycker (lute and zither) and Anna Danilevskaia (vihuela de arco)
