Search - Le Jeune, Huelgas Ensemble, Nevel :: La Printans

You can either listen to this recording and just enjoy the sound of these engaging, vibrant, rhythmically interesting chansons--or, you can get into the details of the origin and construction of this unique collection. Le Jeune was a member of an elite group of musicians and poets in 16th-century Paris, led by poet Jean-Antoine de Baif. To oversimplify, Baif wanted to join poetry and music in a very refined, highly specific manner, concentrating on different kinds of metrical accents, alternating long and short stresses. His poems under the title Le Printans were written with this in mind--and Le Jeune developed a special compositional technique to complement the texts and to illustrate these aesthetic principles. Whether or not you care about the underlying structure of the music, the results displayed in these exceptionally polished performances are striking, especially in the clarity of the lines and the range of expression. --David Vernier