Ferrara Ensemble, Crawford Young - Figures of Harmony: Songs of Codex Chantilly c.1390 (2014)

Presented in a stylish 4-CD box set, here is a comprehensive recording of one of the most enigmatic manuscripts in the history of European music, preserved in the museum at the Château de Chantilly in France. 'Anything that can be sung, can be written in music notation,' claimed an anonymous treatise on notation in the late fourteenth century. The harmonies thus 'captured' on parchment represent an apex in Western music, associated with the wealthiest courts in Christendom, called 'decadent' by some. Various elements of improvisation avant-garde dissonance, astonishing rhythmic complexity, arching, lyrical melisma meld into musical forms which test the boundaries of late Gothic sensibilities. Here are love songs for the End of the World: a time of deadly plague, devastating earthquakes, endless war, disintegrating religion, and the explosion of science and measurement.

"For a collection of earlier and more secular vocal music, consider this outstanding four-disc reissue box consisting of recordings made by the Ferrara Ensemble between 1995 and 2010. Taken together, these comprise a complete recording of the chansons contained in the Chantilly Codex, a 14th-century document that includes many anonymous works as well as songs by Johannes Ciconia, Philipostus de Caserta, and other luminaries of the "Ars Subtilior" movement. The harmonies are astringent, there are frequent incidents of hocketing, and the performances are generally superb. This repertoire constitutes a very important document of the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance periods, and for that reason this box should be seriously considered by all comprehensive classical collections that don't already hold the original issues."