Traveling Songs

Marc Mauillon - Christian Rivet
Les Joueurs de Traverse

1CD - Label ENPHASES (ENC005)
Sortie le 26/04/2024 Distribution OUTHERE

Marc Mauillon, vocals
Christian Rivet, lute and Renaissance guitar

Les Joueurs de Traverse
Lucie Humbert, treble in G and A, tenor flutes
Céline Langlet, tenor flutes
Hélène Douthe, tenor flutes
Jacques-Antoine Bresch, tenor flutes
Sébastien Villoing, bass flutes

Recorded from 23 to 27 August 2021 - Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church, Chassignelles (Yonne)
Production: Alban Moraud Audio

Sound recording & artistic direction: Alban Moraud
Mastering: Alexandra Evrard

With ‘Traveling Songs’, we take you on a musical journey through Renaissance Europe, featuring some of the most famous pieces from the late fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries, whose melodies have been taken up and varied by some of the greatest composers of the day. The art of diminution, so characteristic of Renaissance music, was one way of enriching these fashionable themes with abundant ornamentation. But the choice of variations was infinite: melodic and/or harmonic enrichment, development of cadences, interplay of canons, melodies in parallel, shifted, rhythmically split in one direction or the other, even blending or superimposing themselves on other themes... These multiple inventions and combinations bear witness to the boundless imagination of several generations of composers, ensuring that these works live on and shine through in different styles of writing.

Another richness of this repertoire is the freedom of choice of instruments. Their allocation is rarely specified, apart from certain pieces clearly written for keyboard or lute, often published in tablature rather than on staves. Adapting or arranging a score, particularly a vocal score, for a consort (a family of instruments) or any other instrument, was a natural practice and opened the door to all kinds of experimentation. They made the most of the instruments and singers at their disposal, substituting one for another ad libitum.

To enrich the sound palette of our Renaissance transverse flute consort and take the experience even further, we invited baritone Marc Mauillon and guitarist and lutenist Christian Rivet. Both were ideal partners for our journey: the former for his sense of melody and poetry; the latter for his sensitivity and mastery of Dowland's writing, enveloping these pieces in a highly inspiring polyphonic setting, played here in a configuration that is unusual, if not never heard in this form.

This project is the culmination of some fascinating research, both into the choice of sources and the reproduction of scores, and into the construction of our instruments. We are fortunate to have with us the musician and flute-maker Sébastien Villoing, who has made new transverse flutes for the occasion, the fruit of extensive research and reflection.

Les Joueurs de Traverse is a Renaissance transverse flute consort. First brought together as part of Flûtes d'Allemand, its five members founded their own ensemble in 2017 to explore the polyphonic repertoire of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Coming from a variety of backgrounds, including the modern transverse flute, the recorder and the Irish flute, these musicians are passionate about historical transverse flutes, in particular the baroque one-key flute, as well as early dances. They have studied with Barthold Kuijken, Hélène d'Yvoire, Valérie Balssa, Philippe Allain-Dupré and Pierre Hamon, and dances with Cecilia Gracio Moura, Christine Bayle and Ana Yepes.

They play regularly with baroque ensembles (Stradivaria, Akadêmia, Les Muses Galantes, Le Concert d'Astrée, Opera Fuoco, etc.), modern orchestras (Opéra de Massy, Orchestre Lamoureux, etc.) and chamber ensembles throughout Europe and beyond. Four of them teach at conservatoires in Paris, the Paris region and Tarn.

Their first recording, Si par fortune, released by Son an Ero in 2017, which brings together Franco-Flemish, German and Italian vocal works adapted for transverse flute consort, as was often the practice in the Renaissance, was awarded 5 Diapasons.

More info: https://www.lesjoueursdetraverse.fr