The Manuscrit du Puy opens a window upon the musical activities of the clergy of a great cathedral in central France between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. It was the sort of environment in which the future troubadour Peire Cardenal would have received his earliest musical training. This recording permits us to eavesdrop through the day on the joyful festivities indulged in on the Octave day of Christmas and to witness something of the development of these festivities over five centuries. The basic liturgy of the Divine Office is represented by such ancient and beautiful antiphons as O admirabilis commercium and Magnum hereditatis misterium, going back far beyond those later centuries to the definitions of the Council of Ephesus (431), and indeed, we are taken back further still, to the first half of the fourth century, with the hymn Veni redemptor gentium. But there were clearly talented poets and musicians among the clergy of Le Puy during this later period, to have composed the many delightful additions and embellishments recorded in the manuscript. The Precentor—was he perhaps one particular individual responsible for some of these celebratory items?—seems to have been the object of special acclaim, since the song Annus novus in gaudio, with its two-part refrain, is dedicated to him.
Numerous styles are shown, including traditional reading and collect tones and psalmody, but also strophic conductus with polyphonic refrains, Benedicamus tropes with a melody over a drone and other mildly innovatory material.
The approach to this music by the Gilles Binchois Ensemble is laid-back and straightforward—an attitude highly to be commended. There is no dramatization, no excessive dynamics, no attempt to liven things up by the introduction of instruments, no borrowing of techniques from other traditions. What they do attempt, successfully, to my mind, is to get right under the skin of these later Western medieval clerics and to reproduce what can be discovered of their voice production, pronunciation, pitch, tempo and so on, so as to make the whole thing sound natural and unselfconscious. The vocal quality has that characteristic slightly rough and rather nasal clerical timbre (which Chaucer had noted about the voice of Madame Eglantyne), and any occasional ornamentation, such as repercussion, is executed with the utmost subtlety: indeed, Dominque Vellard is eminently the model to follow in this respect. The note-against-note harmonic sections have a remarkably good vocal blend, reminiscent of viols. In general the recorded quality is good, except for the psalmody, which tends to sound too boxed in and needs more space.'