THE NORTH STAR: MIRACLE TALES FROM MEDIEVAL FRANCE
Anne Azéma, voice, hurdy-gurdy
Shira Kammen, vielle, rebec, harp
1. De l'estoile ... toute ma vie chanterai
Rose cui nois ne gelee Gauthier de Coincy (1177/8-1236)
BN, f fr 24406, 151r-v
Nouvel amour qui si m'agree Rogeret de Cambrai ( 13th century)
De l'estoile, mere au soleil Anonymous (13th century)
BN, f fr 24406, 154r
2. De sainte Léochade
Que de memoyre me dechaie Gauthier de Coincy:
Las, las, las BN, Nouv Acq 24541, 110
Quatre jours plains
Sur ce rivage BN, Nouv Acq 24541, 111r
N'est pas merveille
De Sainte Léochade Petersbourg Ermitage, f fr XIV, 136-138
and BN, Nouv Acq 24541, 111v
3. Porte dou ciel et sourse de miel
Ma vielle Gauthier de Coincy
BN, Nouv Acq 24541, 118
Dou cierge qui descend au jongleour Gauthier de Coincy
A Virgen Santa Maria - Cantiga 8 Attr. Alfonso el Sabio (1221-1284)
4. Maravillosos e piadosos
Gran' dereit - Cantiga 56 Attr. Alfonso el Sabio
Un brief miracle Gauthier de Coincy
Dou tres douz nom a la virge Marie Thibault de Champagne (1201-1253)
BN, f fr 846, 36e
Maravillosos e piadosos - Cantiga 139 Attr. Alfonso el Sabio
Portion ot this program has been recorded as "The Unicorn", an Erato CD
And as “Etoile du Nord” (to be issued, 2002)
Research, transcription, edition and creation: Anne Azéma & Shira Kammen
Edition of litterary sources for Coincy: Koenig
Editions of the Cantigas: Anglès, Mettmann
The musicians
Anne Azéma and Shira Kammen have performed together for over 10 years, on three continents, appearing as partners on many concerts and recordings. They recorded this program - their first duet CD - a few weeks ago.
French soprano Anne Azéma is renowned for her performances of early music. She has been acclaimed by critics on four continents for her original, passionate, and vivid approach to songs and texts of the Middle Ages. She has also been widely praised in many other repertoires, from Renaissance lute songs to Baroque sacred music to twentieth-century music theatre. Ms Azéma's current discography numbers about thirty recordings as a soloist or a recitalist. A featured soloist with The Boston Camerata , she has taken prominent roles in many of that ensemble's tours and Erato productions (Grand Prix du Disque). She has been a soloist with numerous other ensembles, large and small, early and contemporary. Ms. Azéma is a founding member of the Camerata Mediterranea, touring with them internationally and appearing on all of that ensemble CD's (Edison Prize). She is frequently invited as a recitalist touring in North America, Europe, Africa, and Japan. Her teaching activities include master classes, seminars, residencies in France, Holland and the U.S. Anne Azéma's recent major festival appearances as soloist and recitalist include Aix-en-Provence, Graz, Versailles, Spoleto U.S.A., Singapore, Jerusalem, Seville, Dresden, Boston, Bergen, Tanglewood and Tokyo. Anne Azéma was recently appointed director of musical programming for a major project on Medieval Gardens at the Musée National du Moyen Age, Paris.
Shira Kammen received her degree in music from UC Berkeley and studied vielle with Margriet Tindemans. A member for many years of Ensembles Alcatraz, Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with many other ensembles including Sequentia, Hesperion XX, The Boston Camerata, Camerata Mediterranea and the King's Noyse, and is the founder of Class V music, a group dedicated to performing on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught music in the United States, Europe, Canada, Israel and Morocco, as well as on the Colorado and Rogue rivers. Shira often collaborates with several new groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune's Wheel; a contemporary music group; Ephemeros, and an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea.
Summer 2001
The
North Star: Marvels and Miracles of Medieval France
(Concert program notes 01)
Miracles,
“effected by God through means which are unknown to us,” fascinated, frightened
and amazed the medieval world. Miracles wrought by the Virgin Mary were all
the more revered and popular because the Virgin represented a direct and human
link to God, thereby making any divine manifestation at once more extraordinary
and more immediate.
Throughout
the Middle Ages the collections of miracles of the Virgin Mary were many and
varied. They share an emotion and a dualism (good / evil) specific to this
repertoire. They are paraliturgical in nature, and because of the concrete
nature of the stories they tell, these collections are a unique bridge between
different spiritual worlds. The earliest, like the Liber Miraculorum
(Book of Miracles) of Gregory of Tours, describe eastern Marian legends and
miracles. It is only from the 11th century on that these miracles
of eastern origin begin to appear in western compilations. Great pilgrimage
sites were then built (including those of Rocamadour, Chartres, Soissons),
which attracted both great and humble, kings and peasants, clerics and minstrels.
The 13th
century witnessed the flourishing of Marian worship in general, promoted especially
by the Franciscan and Dominican orders in all the countries we now call European.
With this blossoming the stories of the miracles of the Virgin Mary continue
to spread, constantly modified and exchanged. The interest of this repertoire
lies in these very modifications and movements. Many of these collections
contain no music at all, only texts. Others, and in particular the work of
Gautier de Coincy, a prolix and exuberant writer, are sprinkled with musical
compositions. Finally, the vast compilation ordered by Alfonso el Sabio (1221-1284),
King of Castile and Leon, is a jewel which contains within it an entire world
centuries in the making: music and texts are there, as well as visual decoration.
The world
of the court of Alfonso el Sabio was undoubtedly varied, and an extraordinary
cultural crucible. Other parts of the Iberian Peninsula, Navarre in particular,
had regular exchanges with the north of France. Among the works collected
in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, different musical and literary
worlds, including that northern one, stand side-by-side. Although diffuse,
this presence makes itself felt, and at many levels. A number of miracles
included in the collection are set in the north (in Soissons, in Chartres,
in “França,” in “Bretanna,” etc.) Certain stories in these miracles are nearly
identical in Gautier de Coincy and in the cantigas. Finally,
at least one cantiga melody is clearly recycled from the trouvère
repertoire (the melody of Rogeret de Cambrai’s “Novel amor” is found, inverted,
in the cantiga “Maravillosos et piadosos”).
This program juxtaposes the miracles of the north of France, such as those of Gautier de Coincy, and their Iberian cousins, including the miracle of the statue of St. Leocadia, stolen and lost in the Aisne, and then recovered; the miracle of the jongleur who, thanks to his art, was favored with the Virgin Mary’s grace, despite the machinations of an evil monk; and the miracle of the devout monk who, after a life spent singing psalms, dies with the holy sign of five roses in his mouth. In the context of the proliferation of Marian music, which itself mirrors the practice of secular love lyric and music, we will travel from the north of France to the court of Alfonso el Sabio, taking the roads traveled by countless pilgrims, and stopping at the high points of marvels and miracles. Anne Azéma (translated by Gina Psaki)
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