The polyphonic chansons of Renaissance French composer
Clément Janequin are most often encountered in college music history and music appreciation classes, where they serve as early examples of program music. The most commonly heard are Le chant des oiseaux (Bird Songs), Les cris de Paris (The Street Cries of Paris), and La guerre (War).
Janequin and the world that surrounded his efforts are little known except to a handful of specialists, and the tendency has been to listen to these big, vivid pieces and leave it at that. Thus, any addition to the small collection of existing
Janequin recordings is welcome. This disc contains 15 selections drawn from several publications issued at different stages of
Janequin's long career (he wrote over 250 chansons in all, and others were wrongly attributed to him by publishers bent on exploiting his renown). The three famous descriptive works mentioned above are included here, along with several others that are less known, and there are also love songs, a drinking song, and pieces rooted in the sixteenth century's ubiquitous pastoral themes. All show a composer who put virtuoso voices to the test. The performers here are
Les petits chanteurs du Mont-Royal, a boys' choir from suburban Montreal, and the disc was recorded in a cavernous area church. It's a rather old-fashioned recording of Renaissance secular music big choral groupings, singing a cappella, with intonation (especially among the sopranos) occasionally dragged down during long, complex pieces, that are more characteristic of the Renaissance scene of 30 years ago than of today's mostly chamber-sized performances. The music-making here on the whole is spirited but a bit ragged. Here's hoping this disc will inspire other performers to take up the music of
Janequin, a composer who, on the evidence of this disc, has been unjustly neglected.