Ensemble Gilles Binchois - Music and Poetry in St Gallen: Sequences and Tropes (9th Century) (2010)

The Benedictine monastery of St Gallen (Sankt Gallen), situated near Lake Constance, acted in the early medieval period as a creative centre for the development of music and poetry concerned with the liturgy. To be found there were the oldest named composer-poets from the West, especially monks such as Ratpert (d. 890), Notker (d. 912) and Tuotilo (d. 913). They enlarged and broadened out the scope of existing liturgical chants with additions whose melodic and poetic inventiveness still provoke admiration today. Such tropes and sequences were brought together in the 10th century in St Gallen’s codices 484 and 381, with a precise notation in neumes which is unique to the Abbey.

Across a number of important and far-reaching recordings, musicologist Wulf Arlt and Dominique Vellard along with his Ensemble Gilles Binchois have recovered and revived broad areas of medieval music. This collection of works from St Gallen, which we are now reissuing, occupies a distinguished and noteworthy position because it presents the first music of Western culture which can be ascribed to individual creators. The recording itself was made in one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches in Switzerland in Romainmôtier.