Suzie LeBlanc, Stephan Van Dyck, Les Voix Humaines - Bouteiller: De Vanitate Mundi (2005)

French music for much of its existence has been centered on Paris and Versailles, just over 10 miles away. Have you ever wondered about the composers who were active in smaller towns? This disc presents unearthed music by Pierre Bouteiller, who apparently worked in Troyes, southeast of Paris, at the end of the glittering seventeenth century. The music presented here still has much of the homogenous Renaissance texture about it, although it has a rather tentative basso continuo. The requiem mass that is the centerpiece of the album is for five parts plus continuo, and the music is divided up in an unusual way: there are two singers, soprano Suzie LeBlanc and tenor Stephan Van Dyck, and the rest is parceled out to members of the instrumental (mostly viol) group Les Voix Humaines. The reason given for this is that a small-town French church of the era would often use whatever forces were available in performing new music. True enough, perhaps, but the results in this case tend toward monotony. The odd, conservative style of Bouteiller's music makes it unlike anything else from this period, and having a recording of it is welcome even if one wishes that the music had been given a performance of which the composer dreamed rather than one for which he might have settled. The performers are all competent in a restrained way, but sample one of the solo-voice motets featuring LeBlanc (tracks 1 and 5) to see whether her slender, birdlike voice appeals to you.