Fans of the now-defunct
Orlando Consort
can take consolation from the fact that the group's recordings continue to appear;
The Fount of Grace
is the next-to-last volume in the
Consort
's ambitious survey of the music of
Guillaume de Machaut
. It is a strong entry, and it makes a good choice for listeners wanting to sample a single volume. The ten works on the album (curiously divided into 45 tracks in online sources) represent all of the major genres of the composer's music: the ballade, rondeau, motet, virelai, and lay or lai, lacking only the
Notre Dame Mass
that has been covered elsewhere. The subtleties of these and their relationship to both the tumultuous political world in which
Machaut
lived and to the medieval nexus between sacred and secular, so different from our own, are explored in the superb booklet by
Jacques Boogaart
, who prepared the new editions that are used in these performances. As usual, the performances by the
are crisp, rendering the considerable rhythmic complexity of many of these pieces cleanly. The
performs the music a cappella, which is less common than it formerly was; there is some evidence that the pieces could be performed either with or without instrumental accompaniment, but the long
Lay de la fonteinne
seems to cry out for some instrumental variety. That aside, this is an album that delves more deeply into
's music than previous, including those by the
itself, and it landed on classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023. ~ James Manheim