Graindelavoix, Björn Schmelzer - Joye (Binchois - Choral Music) (2007)

Having been responsible for an enthralling and provocative pairing of Ockeghem’s Missa Caput and Parisian machicotage for their first Glossa release (GCD P32101), Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix have taken the composer who Ockeghem regarded as the ‘father of joy’ – Gilles Binchois – as their next challenge. Yet what Björn Schmelzer has assembled for this new recording, entitled Joye, contains, in fact, a number of plaintes or laments by Binchois. How so? “For me,” Schmelzer says, “Binchois is one of the greatest songwriters of all times. He (and Ockeghem) lived and loved to live in a world of paradoxes which he integrated into his work. The happiness and joy that such composers talked about are not common feelings, but something deeper, a sublime joye – one you can only express in sadness, despair, solitude, distance and absence of love. Words like ‘souvenir’ and ‘joye’ are used as devices in much the same way as can be found in other great song traditions, such as the saudade, blues, duende or tarab. Our work with the songs of Binchois started from the preoccupation of singing out one’s sadness and raising it into a kind of sublime expression which can be understood and felt by everybody. We searched also for a new sound and a new way of dealing with instrumental involvement and ornamentation, but one that involved finding a true (and therefore ‘authentic’) sound in which words, ornaments, phrasing and lines speak again and allow one to feel this ‘douloureuse joye’.”