Search - Catherine Bott, Audefroi le Bastart, Bernart de Ventadorn :: Sweet Is The Song: Music Of The Troubadours & Trouveres / Catherine Bott

The songs of the troubadors and their northern French counterparts the trouvères are among the most recorded works in all of medieval music. Yet little is known for certain about how these songs were performed: what, if any, rhythm to apply, for example, and how or even whether to accompany the singer with instruments. Each performer makes different decisions, based on contemporary pictorial evidence, instinct, and simple preference. Most performances of this repertory use at least one or two instruments--in part, it must be said, out of worry about holding listeners' attention. So it took courage for soprano Catherine Bott--and the label L'Oiseau-Lyre--to make an entire CD of these songs performed by a single unaccompanied voice. You may worry that this austere approach won't wear well over 66 minutes, but once you settle into it, it works wonderfully. With her voice alone, Bott captures the spirit of elegant songs like the Comtessa de Dia's "A chantar m'er" ("I must sing") and playful ditties like Etienne de Meaux's "Trop est mes maris jalos" ("My husband is too jealous"); she's particularly good at subtly varying the successive verses of a song while keeping the repeated melody and rhyme/meter scheme clear. Thanks to her performance, this disc is worth experiencing as both music and literature. --Matthew Westphal