Trobairitz
Shannon Mercer; La Nef
Analekta AN 2 9846
Troubadours and trobairitz were active in medieval Provence. The troubadours were men; they were generally not of high birth and in their compositions they sang the praises of noble ladies. By contrast, trobairitz were nobly born women who sang the praises of troubadours. Although a number of their poems have been preserved, there is only one composition that has both words and music: A Chantar by the Comtessa de Día.
A Chantar is not on this disc. Instead the director, Seán Dagher, has taken a number of extant texts and composed new music for them. Their sound world is closer to that of a folk-music group like Milladoiro than that of early music groups like Sequentia or Hesperion XX. No texts are included but they can be found on the Analekta website. An oddity is that, while the titles of songs are given in Occitan and in French and English translations, the texts are in Occitan only. That limits their usefulness. Another oddity is that the names of the (presumed) poets are not included.
The instrumental ensembles are tight and the music is attractive if not particularly memorable. The glory of the disc is in the singing of Shannon Mercer. Mercer is perhaps best known as an early music singer (for Analekta she has recorded Francesca Caccini and traditional Welsh music) but she also sings contemporary music (in a recent Soundstreams concert she performed Arvo Pärt and James Rolfe). Her singing on this disc is very fine: expressive, technically assured and with wonderful intonation.
