Briefly Noted

Abstract

This is the debut recording of Trio Mediaeval, an Oslo-based ensemble of women's voices whose repertoire focuses on polyphonic music of medieval England and France, Norwegian medieval ballads and songs, and modern vocal works. For this program the group selected the celebrated Messe de Tournai and interspersed its sections with nonliturgical polyphonic works taken from the Berkeley Castle Select Roll 55 and monophonic pieces from a thirteenth-century manuscript found in Cortona. At the very end of the program, just before the Ite missa est, the album's title work is inserted, a brief composition written for them by Ivan Moody; the text of Words of the Angel is taken from the Orthodox liturgy for Easter day, and the music is predictably (but no less beautifully) stark and eerily lovely. Trio Mediaeval has marvelous blend and sings in a style that is light without being airy, and the production style (which, while not exactly dry, is unusually restrained for an ECM recording) fits the rich quality of their voices nicely. There is grist for the gender- political mill in the choice of repertoire—in the fourteenth century it would have been unthinkable for women to sing these compositions in their intended setting—but, like Anonymous 4, these women wear that aspect of their project lightly.