Trobairitz (female troubadours) is a cycle of songs for women's choir and ensemble, written by the contemporary Czech composer and pianist Michal Nejtek for the Tiburtina Ensemble based on the texts of medieval troubadours who lived and composed at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries in Occitania. Barbora Kabatkova, the artistic director of the Tiburtina Ensemble, encountered the troubadours' poetry years ago while working on another project. The hitherto unknown world of female poets fascinated her and inspired her to study further, and after receiving an offer from the director of the Prague Spring festival to premiere a new full-length work with her ensemble, she did not hesitate to revive the forgotten world of female troubadours. In the short historical period of the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, women in the area of ?today's southern France enjoyed an unprecedented freedom and rights, and it is from the period of 1180 and 1230 that most of the poems of medieval troubadours survive. Although they were most likely originally set to music, as was the custom at the time, troubadour poems survive without music, with one exception. On this recording, they therefore appear in a new, contemporary musical form and offer the listener the opportunity to look into the world of medieval female poets, into the feelings, wishes and desires that they express in their texts, albeit tender and warm, often more directly and concretely than men. Four poems are sung on the recording in Occitan and four in Czech translation. The Tiburtina Ensemble is accompanied by leading period instrument players of international renown - Marco Ambrosini (nyckelharp), Margit ubellacker (dulcimer) and Catalina Vicens (organetto), and one of the most sought-after Czech drummers, Martin Novak. The 50-minute long work premiered in 2022 at the Prague Spring Festival and is being released in it's world premiere on this recording.

The music on this album comes from a unique and extraordinary period of our history, between the 13th and 14th centuries, which saw the rise of Comuni and Signorie in central-northern Italy: in the years of truce after the end of struggles between the Empire and the Papacy, Italian national sentiment flared up in great spiritual, artistic, political and social fervor. In this fertile environment, a new musical art flourished, the Ars Nova. In contrast to the liturgical polyphony of the Ars Antiqua (12th-13th centuries), which from the first experiments with organa culminated in the highly refined practice of the School of Notre Dame, the term Ars Nova designates the development of secular polyphonic music from the 13th century in France and since the 14th century in Italy. The idea of dedicating an album to the theme of love in Italian music of the 14th century might seem a bit overused, given how rich and varied is the discography in this regard. But the reflection on love undeniably continues to be central in our lives, just as it was for the men and women of seven hundred years ago, whose voices in "Ch'amor mi prese" we interpret and we infuse with new life ad meaning. There are elements of human nature whose essence does not change over the centuries. The feeling of love is one of these: it is expressed through new forms and different codes, but it's most intimate essence is not affected by the passage of time. It does not matter whether the object of love, or it's ispiration, is human or divine: it produces in those who feel it that inexplicable and overwhelming bewilderment that poets, writers, composers, philosophers and mystics in every time and place have felt to express in words or music.

"We are very happy to present this collection of completely unknown yet outstanding pieces to the public. We hope that the charm of the Latin Song of Songs text together with the absolutely unique and elaborate musical settings we chose for this program will surprise and captivate you with its eternal beauty." - Agnieszka Budzinska-Bennett, founder and director of Ensemble Peregrina

REVIEW:

This album contains a collection of completely unknown and yet outstanding pieces inspired by the Latin text of the Song of Songs and originating from various regions, England, Silesia, France, and Bavaria.

Agnieszka Budzinska-Bennett once again demonstrates a thorough understanding of this repertoire. The inspired narrative performance is impeccable, and the singing is very expressive throughout, powerfully luminous and richly colored. The voices are perfectly blended with flawless intonation.

Thanks to Tacet’s Real Surround Sound, the sound is once again of the very best quality.

The booklet contains notes and translations of the lyrics in German and English.

-- Pizzicato

In the circles of early music lovers, documented information about performance practice is so important as to be obsessively searched for by musicians and musicologists. While iconography sometimes cannot be relied on as evidence because of its symbolic meaning, a piece of information on the aesthetics of a performance, the making of an instrument, the composition of a group of instruments, or the repertoire performed is all the more valuable if it comes from a document, be it official or private, such as a letter. Considering that Isabella d’Este was a passionate lover of music and also a musician herself, it is easy to understand that the massive corpus of letters written and received by her can be an extraordinary mine of this type of information. Here the Anonima Frottolisti ensemble (TC490001, TC250001, TC400007) continues its research in a deep introspection into the meanders of the music of Humanism, focusing on a repertoire drawn from the letters of the Marquise of Mantua Isabella d'Este, whose strong cultural and artistic sensibility deeply marked her time.

The exquisitely decorated 15th century choir book known as the Old Hall manuscript was lost to history for the best part of 400 years until its reappearance in a Catholic seminary at the end of the 19th century. The largest surviving collection of medieval motets and mass movements, it immediately became the most celebrated source of English music of the period. It was written in the first instance by a single scribe to ensure that the music of his fellow singers was not forgotten. Many of them are known only from this manuscript, and on this album they find their voices again after more than half a millennium of silence, transformed by the singing of Trio Mediæval in the company of Catalina Vicens, alongside new music by David Lang and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen. Hailed as a "fascinating journey with music of timeless beauty", Trio Mediæval’s highly acclaimed first album Words of the Angel in 2001 launched the group into the elite circles of early music ensembles and introduced them to a broad international audience. Formed in 1997, the Grammy nominated vocal ensemble consists of founder members Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Anna Maria Friman, and Jorunn Lovise Husan who joined the group in 2018. Trio Mediæval has recorded eight albums for ECM Records. An Old Hall Ladymass is their second release, following Solacium, with the Norwegian label 2L. Produced by Morten Lindberg.