Customer Reviews

My Fayre Lady: Tudor Songs and Chant

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Quite simply the finest recording of this material in recent memory. The performance of 'Blow thy horne hunter' has become the benchmark to which all others will be compared. Jeffery Johnson's solos are hauntingly beautiful. It is clear that the men of Linoheart have a passion for this material. This recording, like their more recent album, Paris 1200, reveals the group's extraordiany vocal talents as well as their scholarly mastery of the music of the middle ages. If you can't hear them live, you must have this disc. If you've heard them live, you already own it.

Both haunting and beautiful, the singers of Lionheart transport you to another time when courtly love and Marian worship were the norm. Their pure vocal tones seem to emphasize the purity of the lyrics. My favorite piece is Up Y Arose sung in both English and Latin. I fervently recommend the purchase of this cd. Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus!

All the sounds are very pretty, and the music is beautifully sung. But the majority of the disk is devoted to the Sarum Chant, which is remarkably uninventive and undifferentiated. Moreover, the non-Sarum items are quite awkwardly interwoven. These items do include several numbers by the wonderful William Cornysh, but they also include named composers whose music (judged by this) sounds much like the Sarum Chant, albeit (sometimes) more inventive. Not impressive. If there was a point to this compilation, I don't know what it was. The "fayre ladye" theme is a weak one.