This is a jewel, both for its music and in its performance. The title, 'Distant Love', is described by Margaret Switten in her note as a 'magic formula' that 'still haunts our imagination'. It was invented by the 12th-century troubadour Jaufre Rudel to evoke his own love, unattained and unattainable, for the fabulous Countess of Tripoli, in whose arms he is said to have died. A century later Martin Codax presents a woman singing of her desire for the absent lover she awaits in the port of Viga. His seven cantigas are constructed with simple phrases, in alternating poems of four and six stanzas, each containing a repeated phrase and a refrain, AA1 B; the seventh and final cantiga has only two stanzas.
Andrew Lawrence-King uses snatches of melody from both composers to create, with delicate subtlety, a preamble, a final Dansa, and various interludes. Very occasionally he adds a gentle accompaniment. Paul Hillier interprets each composer with intense sympathy and a remarkable command of the two languages - Galician-Portuguese and Old Occitan. He recites in a normal spoken voice the two Rudel poems lacking music, with Andrew Lawrence-King's added harp interludes for the first, and a quietly improvised accompaniment on the psaltery for the second.
My greatest delight was Rudel's wonderful melody, composed for his most famous poem Lanquan li jorn and justly admired and imitated by the German Minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide.'