Classical Albums:
Adam de la Halle: Le jeu de Robin et Marion
- Main Performer: Micrologus Ensemble
- Languages of Booklet Text: French, English
- Languages of Libertto: French, English
Review
Le jeu de Robin et Marion (The Play of Robin and Marian, from the late thirteenth century) has been one of those works that anyone who took a college music history survey course could name, but that few have ever actually heard or experienced. Certainly the play, which depicts a brief encounter between a seducer knight and a shepherdess who remains true to her boyfriend Robin, looked forward in some sense to the whole tradition of music drama. And, though it consists mostly of monophonic tunes, it has come down to us with several associated pieces in which its composer, Adam de la Halle, trotted out the latest polyphonic techniques. It was cutting-edge music at the time, and for textbook writers it has seemed to take its place in the march of music history.Yet it also looked backward in one important respect. The manuscripts that captured it in musical notation represent not the intentions of a composer, but rather further developments of the work accomplished by improvising minstrels. As with the classic body of chant, the manuscripts (there are three) capture an essentially oral tradition, and they differ sharply one from another. This has tended to intimidate performers.
In 2004, though, two different ensembles took on the challenge of realizing the play on recordings. Both are highly listenable and will draw the buyer into the medieval musical world. The present disc, performed by the French group Micrologus, stresses Adam's status as a link between old culture of the trouvère minstrels and the progressive and secular musical world of the fourteenth century. It is pointless at a distance of more than 700 years what this music is supposed to sound like authentically; Micrologus punctuates the play with polyphonic pieces on related themes and provides an accompaniment (the extant notation consists only of melodies) that reflects the general influence of polyphony. They reject the drones sometimes included in performances of medieval secular music as a modern fiction. In a few words, their approach is busier and more varied than that adopted on the comparable recording by Canada's Ensemble Anonymus, which likewise dispenses with the drones. The Micrologus version is perhaps more splendid, more "royal," and more in keeping with the idea that minstrels imaginatively reconstructed this music each time they sang it anew. The Ensemble Anonymus version, widely performed live, may have more of a feel for the incipient idea of musical drama that is present in this little play. Listeners are encouraged to sample both versions and to pick one as an entryway to a musical world that is far removed from our own yet is one of its foundation stones.
The notes to the Micrologus recording are very informative, but the translations into English and modern French (from medieval French) provided are sequentially arranged rather than being printed in parallel columns. Unless you know medieval French, you'll have a hard time following the texts as they go by. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide
