Ensemble Clement Janequin & Dominique Visse - Claude Le Jeune: Autant en emporte le vent (2005)

The Ensemble Clement Janequin and its director Dominique Visse have issued some of the best recordings of music of the French Renaissance, but it has been poorly served by its record company Harmonia Mundi in this case, at least as far as international distribution goes. The chansons of Claude le Jeune date from the second half of the sixteenth century, later than the programmatic chansons of the composer who gave the ensemble its name. Some of them are quite complex polyphonically, but they are still wordy, descriptive, and often funny. The trouble is, unless you read Renaissance French, you won't get the jokes, for no translations of the lengthy French texts are included. The surfaces of the music are appealing, with the small mixed-gender vocal group (accompanied by a lute) accomplishing virtuoso contrasts of texture. But if there were ever music that needed intelligible texts, this is it. Yes, of course, money's too tight to mention for classical labels all over. But did the world really need another high-priced color reproduction, on the cover and interior, of Botticelli's Venus -- which, for Chirac's sake, is from the wrong country and the wrong century? For Francophones, this CD will amuse and instruct. For everyone else, it's going to be about as much fun as going to an opera you don't know, in a language you don't understand. -- James Manheim