For the second instalment in their trilogy of recordings for Glossa devoted to performing 13th-century music through the prisms of religious, social and political discourses and with the working practices of cathedral builder Villard de Honnecourt at its centre, Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix demonstrate how music was reflecting the changing social environment of the times, notably through the new confraternities – the confréries – in Northern France.

As a cornerstone of his argument Schmelzer presents a seven-sectioned devotional cycle by the trouvère Jaikes de Cambrai, which the Belgian director likens to contemporary art installations and which he views as reflecting similar working practices discernible in Villard’s carnet (or portfolio). Schmelzer emphasizes the unity of Jaikes’s cycle when performed in a certain order, calling him ‘a dramaturge who connects words, emotional responses and music in a completely new way’.

Further medieval trouvère songs of almost equal modern-day anonymity for modern ears (including names such as Robert de Reins La Chièvre, Martin le Beguin de Cambrai and the Chanoine de Saint-Quentin) add to this depiction of Gothic art, suitably recorded in Braine in the Picardy region.

This is a musical (and interpretative) territory which the singers and instrumentalists of Graindelavoix have made their own in recent years, delivering fragments of medieval music with new colours and fresh intuition.