Graindelavoix - Björn Schmelzer - Cesena: Songs for popes, princes & mercenaries (2012)

Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix have recently embarked on a startling and radical new stage in their career which involves a collaboration with Rosas, the ensemble of choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and which unites the music of the late 14th century Ars subtilior and contemporary dance. In July the world première of the production Cesena took place at Avignon in the medieval Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes (the performance commencing at 4.30am!), and Graindelavoix has recorded since then a “soundtrack” album for release on Glossa. The two ensembles are now performing across Europe and beyond in a tour which is scheduled to continue until 2014. The contents of the album mirror the production onstage, and draw on the almost abstract structures, with their complex and fascinating contrapuntal relations, of this early polyphony, much of it deriving from the Codex Chantilly. Through the performances with Rosas, Schmelzer is hoping to gain new insights into performing this repertoire.

As to the meaning of the album’s title, Schmelzer says that Cesena is only a good one if it functions in all different directions at once; whether it refers to an Italian city whose population was slaughtered in the late 14th century (a “Passendale” of its age), at the time of the Western Schism in the Catholic Church as both Rome and Avignon struggled for control, or to a very important Franciscan, Michael of Cesena who fought for a church in poverty against all the decadence of power or, indeed, to other ideas...