Gautier de Coincy - The Miracles of Notre Dame - A Lawrence-King, Harp Consort (2003) [Philidor; FLAC]

The Roman Catholic Church of the 13th century was, at least in its upper levels, erudite and extremely class-conscious. Its members, the so-called scholastics, were contemptuous of those who lacked learning and Latin, which meant most of the known world. They were also noted for espousing a Pauline morality that preached self-denial--at least, to people outside themselves and nobility, because the Church was undergoing increasing criticism outside its own circle for nepotism and greed.

As agaist this, there arose Marianism, a closer-to-the-ground Christianity which gave value to the world and its inhabitants. Gautier de Coincy was among the Marian devotees. While serving as a prior around the turn of the 13th century, he created The Miracles of Notre Dame, a set of poems that praise the Virgin Mary, ascribing many miracles to her, and placing her within the context of modern times and everyday people: farmers, traders, smiths, tanners, but also thieves, drunks, raucous university students, prostitutes, etc. The Marian cult celebrated forgiveness and acceptance of life, rather than its rejection, and de Coincy took his poetry and set it for the most part to popular tunes of the day. In some cases he simply replaced the words with his own--what's called nowadays contrafacta. In others, such as some polyphonic tunes that used two tunes, one set to secular words and another to a strictly Pauline text, he would strip out the Pauline words and melody, returning it to its original form as a monophonic piece, and replacing the secular words with his own Marian poem.

Several of these works were gathered by the Andrew Lawrence-King's Harp Consort, and are performed on this out-of-print album. On a personal note: I found the booklet a real chore, and I'm not thoroughly pleased with my copy of it. The accompanying notes were roughly 70 pages, and the back is glued to the cardboard CD box. I had to contort the box to copy the contents, and some of the pages are off-center as a result. Everything is legible, but I wish it had been possible to grab these in a way that detracted less from the result. Still...

Transfers are made at 768 kBits/s, directly from the disc.

A bio's enclosed, along with an essay in French and English, and both original texts and English and modern French translations. You can find all my classical uploads by searching on Philidor, or just looking in this regularly updated thread:

https://kat.cr/community/show/philidor-s-classical-stuff/