Given how little we know, or are likely to know about the way troubadour music actually sounded, it is surprising that there has not been more variety of approaches in recordings of that repertory over the years. Perhaps performers are cowed by the scholarly disputes, whereas they would be better advised to take them as an invitation to use their own initiative in an attempt to bring the music to life.
Paul Hillier has done that; and in so doing has produced an extremely attractive account of the music cast in a distinctive and individual manner. Building on his long-term partnership with the lutenist Stephen Stubbs, he has added the spirited string playing of Erin Headley and the harp virtuosity of Andrew Lawrence-King (who may occasionally be inclined to upstage his colleagues). Their sound, which seems very closely miked, is a most unusual combination of the still and the bright—this last apparently the result of a high proportion of wire stringing, beautifully controlled. They manage to create enormous areas of musical space which serve as a kind of sonic backdrop to Hillier's performance. And the entire disc is designed as a single unit, going more or less chronologically through the main troubadours but also moving from the still wit of Guillaume IX, via the wonderful flights of imagination in Marcabru and Bernart de Ventadorn, to the acerbic world«_weariness»of Giraut and Riquier. The first and last poems, which have no surviving music, are simply spoken, thereby emphasizing the cyclic nature of Hillier's design.
Everything is taken slowly and gently. Hillier avoids the energetic calls of the watchman that many singers prefer for Giraut de Bornelh's Reis glorios, just as he makes no attempt to turn Marcabru's L'autrier jost' una sebissa into a swift and devastating exchange of wit. His diction is invariably clear and seems most idiomatic. If one occasionally feels the need for a little more variety of tone-colour and pacing, it is also true that the record gives more primacy to the texts themselves than any other interpretation of this repertory that I have heard. And, after all, we know so little about the music that the texts and their verbal colour must be what counts.
The insert, with full texts and translations, is laid out with exceptional clarity and contributes excellently to the effect of the record.'