One is struck by the overwhelming majority of pieces in honour of the Virgin Mary in the extant sources of the School of Notre-Dame. Indeed, the rich and many-faceted devotion to Our Lady, which characterized the Middle Ages and reached its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was itself paralleled by the secular devotion to the ideal Lady of chivalry sung by troubadour and trouvere alike.
Such devotion may well have contributed in no small measure to the development of the art of music, in particular of the ars antiqua with its musical forms: organum, conductus and motet. This is a gentle, unaffected programme of such pieces, some of them of almost childlike simplicity, others of ingenious complexity. The theme that unites them is Mary, seen as Star, Fountain, Maidservant, but above all, as Lady of Flowers, herself the mystical Flower watered by celestial dew, Rose, Lily, Blossom without a thorn. Discantus present her with imagination and sensitivity. An all-female ensemble of eight singers – might that not be a recipe for a bland ‘sameness’ in an hour-long Marian programme? However, Discantus achieve an amazing degree of variety by the simplest of means: by opposing vocal registers, by alternating solo and tutti, by varying the tempos and by delicate phrasing. The mood of each piece is carefully studied. Despite one slight imperfection of pitch, the listener’s ear is absolutely captivated by the sheer beauty and purity of the music.'