THE SAVOY PROJECT
Musique et musiciens autour des Ducs de Savoie: polyphonies du Moyen-Age tardif et de la Renaissance
La cappella musicale dei duchi di Savoia: musiche rinascimentali
del Quattrocento e del primo Cinquecento
Musik und Zeremonie in der frühen Renaissance: Sänger und Komponisten im Dienst der Herzöge von Savoyen
im 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhundert
The Duchy of Savoy
In its heyday
the Duchy of Savoy occupied a strong and distinctive position on the
European
stage: standing between two great cultures, those of Italy and France,
it
partook of both. The court was French-speaking and cultivated a strong
sense of
ceremony and display markedly similar to that of its illustrious
neighbour,
Burgundy, which it clearly emulated. Yet at the same time the cultural
traditions of northern Italy were close at hand and an ever present
influence
(as is still apparent to the observant traveller in this part of Europe
today).
Thus the duchy had a unique and distinctive character, not just
politically but
also geographically and culturally. Standing astride the Alps, it was a
territory
of passage and transition that controlled the mountain passes, the
routes of
journeying, trade and exchange; and while the Alps acted as a conduit
for trade
and commerce, they performed a similar function artistically and
culturally as
well.
In the early
1400s Duke Amadeus VIII sought quite consciously to build up his state,
as the
dukes of Burgundy had done, not simply from a geographical and economic
standpoint but in its cultural resources and institutions too. He
sought new
territory and also new ways of consolidating his position as an
illustrious and
glamorous ruler, in the thoroughly modern manner of the fifteenth
century. The
building up of his musical establishment was an integral part of this
scheme –
an act of princely statecraft and magnificence as well as of artistic
connoisseurship. This attitude he bequeathed to his descendants,
including his
son Louis. The quality and scope of
his patronage, flanked by that of his
predecessors and followers, was brilliantly displayed in the recent
exhibtion Corti a Città (Turin, February-May
2006). The Savoy Project may be seen as a musical response and
counterpoint to
this epoch-making show and to the historical view it transmitted of the
duchy
in all its late-gothic and Renaissance splendour.
A Mass conducted in the ducal chapel, Chambery
The present
project grows out of a series of concerts and recordings by the Binchois
Consort that seek to bring historical andtechnical scholarship into close
creative partnership with the particular skills possessed by
professional
performers working at the highest level. Our aim in the SavoyProject
is to
evoke something of this dazzling period of Savoyard artistic patronage
through
a series of carefully devised musical programmes. These will draw on
some of
the finest fifteenth-century music associated with Savoy and on the
interpretative skills of the Binchois Consort, who are recognized as
pre-eminent in this repertoire. The first concert in the Project was
recently
given in one of the key locations for fifteenth-century polyphony,Trento in North-East
Italy, where the seven Trent Codices, the greatest jewels of the
surviving
manuscript tradition, are preserved. The second concert will be given
in early
2008 in All Souls Chapel, Oxford. The programmes form an illuminating
sequence
and their cumulative impact will, we hope and trust, be revelatory.
Each
programme is carefully planned and internally coherent as a musical
experience.
Yet we are confident that the series as a whole will offer,through the
mutual
light cast by the programmes on one another, as well as individually,
an impact
that will be more than the sum of its parts.
1. Du Fay and Savoy This programme aims to capture something of the cultural and creative richness of the special relationship that existed between Guillaume Du Fay and the dukes of Savoy during one of their most culturally brilliant periods. Du Fay, musical beacon of his age, remained fascinated for more than two decades beginning in the 1430s by the artistic possiblities of his association with Savoy – a duchy that stood in a relationship of friendly rivalry to its ‘cousin state’ of Burgundy. The programme features an epoch-making mass setting of the 1450s, the Missa Se la face ay pale (long seen as a classic of its time). Here is an excerpt from the Gloria of this Mass, as recorded on our CD, 'Du Fay and Savoy,' shortly to be released on Hyperion Records. Like many Mass settings of this period, this one is based on a song laid out in its tenor voice. In this case the model is Du Fay's famous song of the same name, almost certainly composed for the Court of Savoy, but some fifteen years earlier. In the programme, as on the CD, we combine the Mass Se la face ay pale with Du Fay's elegant set of mass Propers, unperformed since the fifteenth century, for St Maurice. Here are some excerpts from the Introit and Communion of this beautiful series of settings.
Château de Ripaille
St Maurice
was a Savoyard saint of great renown and prestige: he was thepatron of Amadeus
VIII’s chivalric order founded at the Château de Ripaille on the southern shores of Lake Geneva, and dedicatee both of the great abbey of St
Maurice-en-Valais in the upper Rhône valley and of an important
church in the
ducal town of Pinerolo, to the south-west of Turin. This brilliant
tapestry of
four-part polyphony, describing in a great arc the musical course of a
princely
Mass of the richest kind from the 1450s, will be complemented by individual
songs and motets closely connected to the Savoyard context. A surviving letter written by Du Fay to the Medici in Florence tells how, while at the Court of Savoy, he has composed no fewer than four laments to commemorate one of the 
most shattering events of the era: the Fall to the Turks, in 1453, of Constantinople. We are wonderfully fortunate that one of these, the sublimely beautiful O tres piteulx, has survived, and we have included it in our 
programme and CD.
San Maurizio, Pinerolo
St Maurice-en-Valais
2. Princes,
Popes, Politics and the Power of Music
This programme comprises a
linked
sequence of major works by Du Fay and others from the 1430s and 40s.
These were
composed directly for some of the most eminent men of the age, both of
the
secular world and
of the international church, in an era when music,
religion
and politics were still profoundly interconnected.The programme sets
great
occasional pieces, papal ceremonial music, and contemplative devotional settings against one another in what we believe is a vivid and striking
musical
arrangement. Rome, Florence, Savoy and the Council
of Basel are all represented here, as is Amadeus VIII in his later
guise as
Felix V, the great peace-loving antipope of Lausanne. Major
compositions by Du
Fay are complemented by selections by Johannes Brassart and Nicolas
Merques among
others, forming a musical counterpoint to such important cultural
reference
points as Conrad Witz’s great altarpiece for St Peter’s, Geneva (signed
and
dated 1444) and Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s (the future Pius II’s)
Latin
eulogy of Basel.
Conrad Witz: Adoration of the Magi
3. ‘In
Death, A Living Monument’: the
Brumel Requiem
This programme showcases a sequence of commemorative pieces designed to evoke the death and commemoration of Duke Philibert II ‘le Beau’ (d.1504).
The Eglise de
Brou—which
still stands, complete with the fabulous tomb of Philibert himself—was
built by
his widow Marguerite of Austria as a grand funerary chapel for her
husband, and
could well have been the setting for just such a Requiem as that by
Brumel,the
centrepiece of this programme. The Requiem is complemented by a new
performing
version of Brumel’s five-voice motet Languente miseris (here
reconstructed as a commemorative déploration, which it
may well have
been) and a short group of pieces on the Seven Joys ofthe Virgin,
Margaret’s preferred theme for her own funerary monument and commemorative space
within
the same chapel. A more particular aim in this case would be to give a
location
concert (and, as a permanent historical document in sound, a 
recording)
in the
great memorial church at Brou.
Tomb of Philibert II 'le Beau'
4. ‘The
Savoyard Picturesque’ 
This programme presents a brilliant but
neglected
polyphonic mass setting by Antoine Brumel on a ‘picturesque’ Savoyard theme: the
lovely Missa ‘Berzerette savoisienne’ based on a song of the same name
by
Josquin Desprez. It sets this against selected items of chant and
polyphony – both songs and motets – drawn from
manuscript sources closely related to Savoy and its musicians. The
programme
will be structured around the Mass Ordinary, with motets substituting
for Mass
Proper items, while a group of songs will offer a moment of stylistic
and
poetic contrast, evoking the vitality of the court in the grandeur of
its
secular displays.
5. Songs and Motets
This programme will present (as did the initial concert of the Project given at Trento in October 2007) a balanced and contrasting
sequence of
songs and motets, drawn in the main from manuscript sources that are of
known
Savoyard provenance, or can be convincingly associated with Savoy in
some other
way. The programme will include songs by Du Fay and others from the 1430s to the 1450s, showcased
in some
of the great chansonniers of the period. Among these, one of the most striking is the spirited Donnes l'assault a la fortresse, one of various songs of the era that equates the quest of love for the poet's mistress with warfare, in this case an assault on a castle. The songs will be interleaved with
motets by
composers represented in the Savoy sources and archives. This programme
aims to
present a musical image of the court in all its vivacity and colour, an
image
given particular vividness through the juxtaposition of contrasting and
complementary
styles (as well as languages). At the same time, it will expose rare
new
corners of the song and motet repertory of the fifteenth century, in
the form
of new and unfamiliar works that, in turn, will cast new light on the
more
familiar pieces.
Epilogue
This last
offering in the series will focus on the fascinating and unique
repertory of
the Franco-Cypriot manuscript (MS Turin Bibl. Naz. Univ. I.II.9). This large and important manuscript originally
formed part of a ‘marriage bequest’ brought to Savoy by Anne de
Lusignan at the
time of her wedding in 1434, and was kept thereafter in the ducal
library. As
in the other programmes, we will again use historical and philological
scholarship to bear on insights that can only, in the end, come through
intensive study in the context of actual performance. This fascinating
and
musically rewarding group of compositions, which embraces both chant
and
polyphony, has never before been seriously subjected to such study, and
little
of it has been performed in modern times. The programme thus promises
to be
revelatory in more ways than one: it will give the repertory the level
and
intensity of exposure for which it is long overdue, and at the same
time reveal
it in the context of the larger picture of Savoyard music during this,
its
cultural heyday.
