Compared with Lux Feminæ,
Montserrat Figueras' ambitious musical exploration of medieval femininity, this disc by British early music soprano
Evelyn Tubb is a more modest affair. The booklet by string player Michael Fields merely outlines the concept of courtly love in the most general terms, and the relationship of the individual pieces (mostly not discussed specifically in the notes) to the theme stated in the title is similarly general. There is no doubt that the idealized lady of medieval courtly love songs was a stand-in for Mary at times, and
Tubb's program takes this as a point of departure. In the first part of the program she alternates secular monophonic songs (one of which, the intense A chantar m'er de so qu'eu non volria, was composed by the female troubadour the Comtessa de Dia), sparsely accompanied by one or two instruments, with pieces by
Hildegard of Bingen, sung unaccompanied in her pearly solo voice.
Tubb moves on to Renaissance lute songs by
Dowland and other composers in the second half of the program. Taken as a whole, the exercise only loosely makes sense. The imaginative reconstruction of
Hildegard's choral chants as solo songs is aesthetically effective but masks the real differences in discourse between that abbess and the noble composers of troubadour songs. The ordering of the troubadour songs themselves doesn't have any sharp point. And the equation of Elizabethan melancholy with courtly love is more complex than what is indicated here. The good news is that
Tubb is in fine form vocally. The ornamented melodies of
Hildegard may be more her creation than
Hildegard's, but they soar. The secular songs, whether from a male or female perspective, strike a perfect balance between drama and the elegance of literary convention. And
Tubb could probably sing a page of database code and bring it a certain interest. The end result is an hour of gorgeous singing that will appeal to anyone who listens to medieval and Renaissance music for their meditative qualities.