This is an intriguing and fascinating documentary. Fulbert of Chartres can scarcely be more than a name to the majority of music lovers, and yet there can be few much better-known composers whose works, like his, have never ceased to be sung for a thousand years and who still maintain their place in the current repertoire. Indeed, Fulbert's three magnificent responsories – from Matins of the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary – which form the basis of this collection, were reprinted by Solesmes in a modern edition of their Processionale monasticum as recently as 1983. And if few monastic choirs still have the chance to sing the full night office of Matins, most of their members will at least be able to hum the tune of Benedicamus I – that famous phrase drawn from Stirps Jesse – and innumerable congregations will be familiar with Fulbert's famous Easter hymn Chorus novae Jerusalem – ''Ye choirs of new Jerusalem'' – though most probably not to its usual Mode 3 chant melody, nor even to the First Mode one in the Hymnarius, as sung here.
The interest of this recording is that it traces the early history of a number of Fulbert's compositions, showing how they came to be elaborated by the application of successive techniques over the first four centuries of their existence. We hear each piece first in its original form, often with reference to the rhythmic neumes of the school of Laon, bringing out the structural notes and skimming over the ornaments with lively fluidity; and then with numerous subsequent transformations: organum, diaphonia, motet. The few metrical hymns are sung rather loosely, in a way that I find rather attractive and fairly plausible. One of them, Deus, Pater piissime, is divided, strophe by strophe, between a low and a high voice, with the soprano transposing the melody up a fifth and the baritone returning it to its original tonality – a novel idea and one which seems to work rather well. Michel Huglo's exemplary insert-notes provide the necessary historic background. Full texts are given, but only French translations of the Latin. Incidentally, I was surprised that Philomela was never identified as a nightingale in the translation of the charming non-liturgical sequence Aurea personet lyra.'