Le Royaume oublié – La Tragédie CathareMontserrat Figueras, Pascal Bertin,
Marc Mauillon, Lluís Vilamajó, Furio Zanasi
La Capella Reial de Catalunya
Hesperion XXI
Jordi Savall
Alia Vox AVSA9873 A/C (2009)
[flac, cue, log, scans of the book]
This CD-set brings us back in time more than usual. It begins around the year 1000 and comes to a well known composer only at the end – Dufay. The dissident Christian movement of the Cathars, or Albigenses, is the subject of the four-hour program conceived by Jordi Savall, using mostly music of the troubadours of Occitania (south of France) where Catharism spread.
The songs, while not Catharist, have been often composed at the courts which were trying to maintain their independence from the King of France in the same way the Cathars were trying to survive the opposition of the official Church.
On hearing the beginning of the first CD, so various, you may be wondering what place that music belongs to. Well, you must think about the presence of the Arabs in Europe and their fruitful cultural exchanges with the Jews. Would you believe this happened?
Although the idea of providing the liner notes in seven languages has been certainly part of the program, I had to choose: the full scans are given only for MIMIC official language, English.
The following is an excerpt from the book.
The principal sung text in the present recording were chosen primarly on the basis of their poetic and musical interest, as well as their relevance to the various historical events. In this context, we should single out the “first” troubadour, Guilhem de Peitieu, and the first trobairitz, the Countess of Dia, and of course the other wonderful troubadours such as Pèire Vidal, Raimon de Miraval, Guilhem Augier Novella, Pèire Cardenal, Guilhem Montanhagol and Ghilhem Figueira. In the case of the songs for which no music is extant, we have followed the practice of borrowing melodies by other composers such as Bernat de Ventadorn, Guiraut de Bornheilh, and other anonymous authors, thus emulating a very widespread practice in medieval poetry, a fact that sometimes is overlooked today.
[…] In our approach to the Cathar liturgy, all the texts are recited in Occitan, while the text in Latin are sung in a very ancient form of plain chant. In evoking the executions at he stake we have used a moving and dramatic combination of delicate improvisations on wind instruments of Eastern origin, such as the duduk and the kaval symbolising the souls of the victims, with the contrasting menace and mounting tension expressed by the presence of the drum rolls.