Luogo e data di registrazione		Palais des Académies, Brussels (Belgio) - giugno 1653 (Du Fay) Palais du Compte d'Egmont, Brussels (Belgio): - 31 gennaio / 1 febbraio 1956 (Machaut) - 1-2, 7 luglio 1956 (Léonin, Pérotin)
	Original Editions		- Archiv Produktion | 14 019 APM | 1 LP | (p) 1954 | ANA | Du Fay (9-13) - Archiv Produktion | 14 063 APM | 1 LP | (p) 1956 | ANA | Machaut (3-8) - Archiv Produktion | 14 068 APM | 1 LP | (p) 1956 | ANA | Léonin, Pérotin (1-2)
	Edizione "Codex"		Archiv Produktion "Codex" | 453 162-2 | durata 75' 18" | LC 0113 | 1 CD | (p) 1996 | ADD | mono
	Executive Producer		Dr. Fred Hamel
	Recording Producers		Werner Grimme (Dufay, Macjaut), Gerhard Henjes
	Cover		Virgon with Child (mosaic, 12th century); Cathedral of S. Maria Assunta, Torcello (detail)
	Art Direction		Fred Münzmaier
	Note		Original-Image-Bit-Processing - Added presence and brilliance, greater spatial definition

ORIGINAL EDITIONS 1 LP - 14 019 APM - (p) 1954 (Du Fay) 1 LP - 14 063 APM - (p) 1956 (Machaut) 1 LP - 14 068 APM - (p) 1956 (Léonin, Pérotin)

Treasures from Archiv Produktion’s Catalogue A rare and valuable collection of documents is the pride of any library or archive. CODEX, Archiv Produktion’s new series, presents rare documents in sound from 50 years of pioneering recording. These recordings have been digitally remastered using original-image bit-processing technology and can now be appreciated in all the richness of their original sound-image. They range from the serene counterpoint of a Machaut, the intensely spiritual polyphony of a Victoria, to the imposing state-music of a Handel. For the artists on Archiv Produktion recordings, a constant aim has been to rediscover the musical pulse of past times and to recreate the spirit of past ages. In this sense each performance here - whether by Pro Musica Antiqua of Brussels in the 1950s, the Regensburg Domchor in the 1960s, or Kenneth Gilbert and Trevor Pinnock in the 1970s - made a vital contribution to the revival of Early Music in our time. CODEX highlights recordings that were unique in their day, many of them first recordings ever of this rare and remarkable repertoire, now appearing for the first time on CD. A special aspect of the history of performance in our century can now be revisited, as great moments from Archiv Produktion’s recording history are restored and experienced afresh. Dr. Peter Czornyi Director, Archiv Produktion MACHAUT: MESSE DE NOSTRE DAME | Dufay · Léonin · Pérotin The sacred music of the Middle Ages in Western Europe is founded on chant, particularly in its Gregorian form, codified by the mid-ninth century. Soon the single musical line of chant was accompanied note for note by a second voice sounding a fourth below, a primitive polyphony termed organum. By the 11th century, however, it was the superius or upper part instead that descanted over the cantus plainchant melody, still note for note but freer, making much use of contrary motion. When the chant moved down, the superius would move up and vice versa. But the two parts were still locked into a note for note relationship. With the refinement of musical notation, enabling more precise indications of pitch, duration and rhythm, it became possible to compose true polyphonic works by adding an upper voice that could move freely over a chant. By mid-12th century, when the Cathedral of Notre Dame was under construction in Paris, two great masters of Ars Antiqua organa there created large-scale liturgical compositions of great fluency and beauty. Léonin (fl. c. 1160-1180) composed in two parts while his successor, Pérotin (fl. 1180-1225), expanded the genre to three and even four parts. The “tenor”, so called because it held the line of the liturgical chant, served with its long note-values as a series of pedal points over which the upper part or parts sounded melodically. The colouring of the music changed as it moved from one pedal note to another, almost in a kind of modulation, rather analogous to the constantly varying appearance ofa rose window. In a middle section the tenor would move more quickly, then revert to the heavy-footed pace of the opening, finally serving as a very prolonged pedal note for a last burst of florid vocalization. Interspersed were interludes of simple plainchant. Virtually nothing is known of the careers of Léonin and Pérotin, the acknowledged masters of the Ars Antiqua. An English monk of the period summed up their accomplishments in these words: “Léonin was the best composer of organum. He wrote the Great Book of Organa, for Mass and Office, to enlarge the divine service. This book was used until the time of the great Pérotin, who shortened it and rewrote many sections... Pérotin... wrote the best four-part organa, such as Viderunt and Sederunt, with the fullest embellishments of harmonic art.” It has been established that Pérotin’s renowned Sederunt principes, heard in this recording, was a setting of the gradual for St. Stephen’s Day (26 December) 1199, an important feast in the Anglo-French liturgical calendars of the time. The outstanding musician of the 14th-century Ars Nova, Guillaume de Machaut (c. l300-1377), acclaimed both as composer and poet of rare distinction, was born in the Champagne region of France. After taking holy orders, he travelled widely as secretary to the King of Bohemia and Duke of Luxembourg. Finally he became a canon of the Cathedral of Rheims, in the region of his birth, where he lived out his long and productive life. The complete musical works, both sacred and secular, of this masterly craftman are preserved in six beautifully illuminated manuscripts destined for important patrons. Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, his largest work, is accounted the first polyphonic setting of the Ordinary of the Mass entirely by a single composer. In four parts throughout, its consistency of style, complexity and variety of rhythmic organization indicate that this late work was intended to be performed whole. All sections of this votive Mass are linked by a characteristic motif of four descending notes. In addition to the usual five movements, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, Machaut also set Ite missa est, “Go, the mass is done”, the words with which the priest dismisses the congregation. Safford Cape summed up the essence of the Messe de Nostre Dame, describing it as “an ascetic, though highly beautiful, conception, in which are embodied the most abstract and the most purely spiritual principles conceivable”. Machaut’s Mass was still performed in the 16th century and can be considered the ancestor of the polyphonic Masses of Josquin, Palestrina and Victoria: perhaps in a sense, even of those of Bach and Beethoven. Born around the year 1397 in Hainault (now in Belgium), Guillaume Du Fay was trained as a chorister at Cambrai. His growing fame as a singer and composer soon led to his travels to Italy, where he served at various ducal and papal courts. In 1436 he was in Florence in the retinue of Pope Eugene IV and composed there the festival motet for the dedication of the great domed cathedral completed by Brunelleschi. Yet Du Fay often returned to his Burgundian homeland. Finally he was appointed a canon of the Chapter in Cambrai where he spent the last years of his life down to his death in 1474. The first composer to dominate the musical world ofhis own time, Du Fay wrote music that is still immediately accessible today. The glowing warmth of melodic invention and the fervent quality of his personal expressiveness cannot fail to win over even those quite unfamiliar with preclassical music. The sacred song Vergine bella to the first stanza of an Italian canzona by Petrarch that also inspired Palestrina and other composers counts as one of Du Fay’s most famous works. Vexilla Regir is based on a hymn by the 6th-century cleric Fortunatus which became, 500 years later, the marching song of the Crusaders. It closes with a particularly striking but brief Amen. The three-voice motet Flos florum is notable for its florid vocal writing and rhythmic variety. The three-voice setting based on the ninth-century Pentacostal hymn Veni creator rpiritus embellishes the simple chant in an elegantly flowing line. Du Fay’s setting of Alma redemptori mater for three voices paraphrases an eleventh-century Marian antiphon. It begins with a slightly elaborated version of the old chant for the highest voice, joined then by the two lower parts, all blending melodic lines in free counterpoint, rather than strict imitation, before the closing Amen section in block-chords. A true pioneer in the revival of early music, the American conductor, musicologist and composer Safford Cape (1906-1973) formed the Pro Musica Antiqua of Brussels in 1933 as a performing ensemble of singers and instrumentalists specializing in 13th- to 16th-century music. The ensemble toured throughout Europe, North and South America. The group’s musical adviser was the eminent Belgian musicologist Charles van den Borren. Howard Schott