Machaut: Songs from Le Voir Dit

The Orlando Consort make their Hyperion debut with the first in a series of albums devoted the complete chansons of the fourteenth century's most famous poet and composer, Guillaume de Machaut. This bold project benefits directly from a Leverhulme Trust project that will produce the first modern edition of Machaut's complete poetry and music. Today, Machaut is considered the supreme representative of the Ars nova musical tradition that revolutionized composition and notation in that period. Livre dou Voir Dit (Book of the True Tale) is Machaut's masterpiece. It relates a supposedly recent episode in the aging poet-composer's life - his love affair with a lady some forty years his junior.