Les Menestriers

 LES MENESTRIERS / THE MINSTRELS

Disques du Cavalier, 1970, BP 2001

This is the first album of this French band, one the major bands of Early music at the time founded by Julien Skowron and Yves Audard in 1969 . Among the five  members Julien Skowron on dessus de viole (viola da gamba) became the most known in the medieval and Renaissance circles; he took part in several bands notably La Maurache and had been a teacher at the Conservatoire de Gennevilliers near Paris for thirty years.  They recorded nine albums between 1970 and 1980.
Early music (in France anyway) was restricted to a small amount of performers and musicologists and was percieved as an extension of ''classical music'' hence an interpretation sometimes rigid. The band wanted to extract those early pieces from that classical conception and bring them to a large audience thanks to good arrangements, mastering of the instruments and a lively approach. They were quite successful. I discovered this kind of music withe their albums as well as with other bands like the Florilegium Musicum de Paris.
What was important as well was the fact that a new type of music had appeared at the end of the 60s : the folk revival; at that time early music and French folk were close enough.
So I would say that the Ménetriers paved the way to the numerous youngers musicians and groups who followed them in performing and studying this great repertoire.
Side A is about compositions dated from the 13th to the 15th century, side B dedicated to the 16th century with a good deal of pieces by Tielman Susato.

 

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