The Codex Faenza is one of the few remaining sources for instrumental music at the turn of the fifteenth century. Originally conceived as an exclusively instrumental collection, it consists for the most part of arrangements of vocal pieces by the leading composers of the previous generation, Landini and Machaut among them. (A previous anthology centred on this collection, from the Ensemble Organum, appeared nearly ten years ago on Harmonia Mundi.) Not all the music recorded here comes from the Codex Faenza itself, but the vocal selections are the original models of pieces that appear as instrumental arrangements in the manuscript. This offers the attentive listener a way into an unfamiliar repertory, and rounds off the disc in a nicely balanced manner.
I had greeted this ensemble’s previous offering a couple of years ago (of songs by Dufay, 9/96) with reservations, but the results here are to my mind much more satisfying, mainly because the relationship between voices and instruments is more rigorously conceived: many of the texted pieces receive exclusively vocal performances. Again, this makes sense from the point of view of programming, but it also allows a fine cast of singers to make the most of this music. In the instrumental pieces, some may feel that more licence is taken with the music than the notation warrants; but the debate as to the status of ‘the musical text’ in this repertory is in any case fraught with difficulties: judge for yourself. '