The Leuven Chansonnier

In 2015 a manuscript with 50 polyphonic pieces of the Franko-Flemish vocal polyphony was found in private ownership. While compared with other sources, 38 of them has been identified as already known compositions of masters such as Gilles Binchois, Johannes Ockeghem, and Antoine Busnoys. Only the 12 pieces presented here were previously unknown. Within the CMME (Computerized mensural music editing) Projekt , a edition of the entire Leuven chansonnier was presented by the Goldberg-Foundation and its founder (Clemens Goldberg). Following Dr. Goldberg's suggestion and based in on the CMME-Edition presented by the Goldberg Foundation, klassik-resampled, tried to produce in this interpretation experiment (as far as I know for the first time) recordings of these 12 hitherto unknown pieces from the Leuven manuscript with digital means and publish thoses recordings them online.

references for the instrumentation in contemporary paintings

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  secular vocal music

  The sentences of the Leuven Chansonnier are, in many respects, clearly identifiable as secular art music, although this does not rule out the influence of elements of spiritual music practice on different levels. Contrary to liturgical music practice, female voices are not uncommon for the secular music of the Renaissance. The fact that text were mostly only for the treble voice was written, however, does not necessarily exclude the fact that the other voices could not be sung. This is also suggested by the various pieces in  this Leuven Chansonniers which have text also in one or all other voices.
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  Voices and Instruments

  The fact that mostly only the treble voice has been written can be understood as an indication that accompanying voices are likely not to be sung, but by played with Wind instruments, stringed instruments or others.
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  Instrumental ensembles

  On the other hand, it does not necessarily have to be assumed that instruments were used exclusively in accompanying functions. Pure instrumental ensembles are also conceivable. For instrument families, such as, for example, Flutes, homogeneous instrumental ensembles are also conceivable.
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  Portativ - Organetto

  Outside of ecclesiastical music practice, the portative (organetto) occurs as an instrument similar to the organ. It is more or less transportable and therefore also very limited in the range and number of registers. Nevertheless, with its organ similarity, it always reminds aspects of spiritual music practice.
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  Zink - Cornet

  Since the early Renaissance, the zink (Cornet) has been a trumpet-like wind instrument which was more and more common.
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  The performing singing Soloist

  The emphasize on the diskant (treble) voice is likely to rise more attention the performing singer and his expressive gesture.
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  Singing Childs

  It might even be possible, that children took part in the performance of secular music.
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  stringed instruments

  In addition to lutes and harps, the Psalterium also belongs to the stringed instruments that appear on Renaissance paintings. While the Gamba will be completely develloped and fully established later, there nevertheless will presumable already have been strings in various ranges besides the Fidule.

The digital interpretation experiment on instrumentation

The texture of the chansonnier itself does not provide any specific information on a suitable or intended instrumentation. The musikhistoric classification of the well-known pieces and their composers, as well as testimonies of contemporary painting (see above), allow us to conceive different constellations of the performance. The fact that among the fifty pieces of the chansonnier there are also individual pieces with spiritual content (1v-2r "Ave regina Coelum" by Frye or an anonymous pilgrim member "Pelerin alant a saint James") suggests that the boundaries of secular and spiritual Music practices could at least have been permeable. Wherever conceivable, this project reflects the closeness of individual pieces to the clerical choirs, even with corresponding "experimentally" versions for choirs.

Despite all conceivable limitations, the technology used by Klassik- resampled allows to produce for all pieces recordings in quite different instrumentation with historical original instruments. In the interpretation experiment presented here, all previously anonymous 12 unicates are presented in 4 to 7 different instrumentatioon variants, each of which seems suitable for itself to test other facets of the music in its conceivable historic environment. I would be glad if this would perhaps stimulate some interested performers and help to develop their own conceptions of the music and how it might be performed.

texts and text intelligibility

The technical possibilities used here, especially with regard to the articulation and interpretive representation of the sung text remain clearly behind the possibilities of a good performer. Here it is only possible to reflect the basic features of the speech sound. This makes it very unwise to present a complete "performance" of the sung text with all available verses. A "performance" would surely take account of what has to be dispensed with in this experiment. Here the texts entered in the sheet music are only used for the sound shaping of the digital song. The entire available texts according to the edition of the Goldberg Foundation therefore added separately to each piece for reading.