Els Janssens-Vanmunster – voice
Marc Mauillon – voice
Elizabeth Rumsey – vielle
Uri Smilansky – vielle
Marc Lewon – lute, gittern, vielle, recitation

 

With his „Metamorphoses“ Ovid inspired western literature and music until the present day. Medea and Narcissus, Pythagoras and Pygmalion, Orpheus and Python - these figures and their fates are all-pervasive in the songs of late 14th century composers, inspiring them to produce some of the finest and most unusual works of the Middle Ages.

Brief passages from the Metamorphoses tell of the “changing of shapes” and situate the affecting compositions by masters like Machaut, Magister Franciscus and Suzoy in their original contexts. Supplementing them with anonymous works, instrumental versions and virtuoso diminutions, Ensemble Leones spirits its audiences away to a mythical sound-world from the “autumn of the
Middle Ages”...

 

 

Programme:

 

About the four elements

• [Quatuor voces in] fuga trium temporium (J. de Climen & J. Cornelius)

 

Narcissus and the pond

• De Narcissus, home tres ourgilleus (Magister Franciscus)

• Tre fontane (anonymous istanpitta)

 

About water

• Lay de la fonteinne: Je ne cesse de prier (Guillaume de Machaut)  

 

= Pause =  

 

Medea and Jason

• Medee fu en amer veritable (anonymous)

• Je chante ung chant en merencoliant (Matheus de Sancto Johanne)

 

Pygmalion

• Je puis trop bien ma dame comparer (Guillaume de Machaut)

• Pictagoras, Jabol et Orpheus (Johannes Suzoy)

 

About fire: the crystal sky

• Le firmament (anonym)

• Le ray au soleil (Johannes Ciconia, ca. 1370-1412)

• Pantheon abluitur – Apollinis eclipsatur – Zodiacum signis – In omnem terram (B. de Cluny)