Schola de la Sainte-Chapelle & Brigitte Lesne - Splendeurs de l'Ars nova - Plain-chant et polyphonies du 14e siècle (2025)

Despite a difficult context (plague, Hundred Years' War, papacy in Avignon, etc.) the 14th century experienced great artistic vitality. As with painting and sculpture, music innovated and the movement known as Ars nova saw the birth of works in which polyphony - which would be dominant during the Renaissance - now held an important place. This is the case of the mass recorded in this album - the Toulouse Mass - a mass that we know thanks to a manuscript from this period preserved in the municipal library of the Ville Rose: it is one of the first examples of polyphonic musical setting of the ordinary of the mass. Historians believe that its composition is not unrelated to the papal court of Avignon.

This programme is completed by other pieces (monodic and polyphonic) from the Ars nova from other manuscripts and celebrating the Virgin Mary as well as two famous Toulouse saints: Saint Raymond, who was canon of Saint-Sernin and Saint Louis of Toulouse, great-nephew of King Louis IX (Saint Louis) who was briefly bishop of the city, after having renounced his princely heritage to live in poverty in the Order of the Friars Minor of Saint Francis.