La Main Harmonique, Frédéric Bétous - Ockeghem et Compere - Musique au temps d'Anne de France (2010)

French group La Main Harmonique is named for the "Guidonian hand," known to generations of music history graduate students, which teaches solmization syllables by means of labeled finger joints. That suggests the basic orientation here, which is toward specialists; the booklet dutifully lists library sources but does not provide anything so helpful as translations of the 15th-century French texts (there are some almost completely black photos of the performers, though). It's nice, however, to have recordings of this secular chanson repertoire, which in the case of Johannes Ockeghem is not so well represented on recordings as his intellectually fearsome masses. With the chansons it's a different story, as the medieval conventions of courtly love began to give way to the more direct sentiments and the closer connection between words and music that would be heard in Josquin's music a generation later. The delicate performances of La Main Harmonique seem to capture the individual moods of each piece, featuring constantly shifting accompaniments (or none at all in the case of the massive Mort, tu as navré, track 7, a French-Latin lament for the deceased Gilles Binchois) that become part of the overall interpretation. This is extremely effective, and the singing, playing, and sonics interact more convincingly than is usual in academic recordings of this type. This disc should find a place in library collections devoted to Renaissance music.