Chansons à boire et à danser - Airs de cour Ratas del viejo Mundo

• Jean Boyer (1600 - 1648):
• 1 Absent de vos beaux yeux 02:27
• 2 Filandre à rauy mon cœur / Iris, voulez vo' toujours vivre sous la dure loi du devoir ? 03:42
• 3 Que ferai-je ? Que dirai-je ? 04:53
• 4 Je suis à présent à moi 03:38
• 5 Courante 02:05
• 6 Compère, j'ai trouvé du vin 02:02
• 7 Rigoureux souvenir d'une joie passée 02:41
• 8 Donne-moi ton pucelage 01:44
• 9 D'où vient que ces beaux yeux 02:32
• 10 Que faisais-tu, gros garçon 02:13
• 11 Sarabande 02:16
• 12 Si j'aime autre que vous 02:20
• 13 Sombres forêts, noires vallées 05:16
• 14 Quoi ! Faut-il qu'une même flamme ? 02:29
• 15 N'avez-vous point d'autre discours 01:44
• 16 Quand je tiens ma chère bouteille 02:51
• 17 Beau, voyant votre douceur 02:54
• 18 Beaux yeux divins, qui voyez dans mon cœur 02:18
• 19 Je veux plutôt vivre pour te servir 03:46
• Total Runtime 53:51

Info for Chansons à boire et à danser - Airs de cour

Parisian composer Jean Boyer’s Recueil d’Airs à boire et danser from 1636 belongs to a genuinely French genre of drinking and dance songs, a more light-hearted offspring of the Air de cour. The latter, a courtly secular strophic song, became one of the most important vocal genres in the first third of the seventeenth century in France. Among the many collections of chansons à boire et à danser of the time, Boyer’s are probably the most compelling, both rhythmically and harmonically, and the texts he chose to set to music are generally more refined than some of his contemporaries’. From the mere number of copies of most of these collections extant in many European libraries, we realize how well diffused and popular this type of repertoire was, while it has been left virtually untouched in the twenty-first century.

Ratas del viejo Mundo

Ratas del viejo Mundo
The rodents of the old world — Ratas del viejo Mundo — travel the length and breadth of Europe to form their very own rat pack, coming together around songs, polyphony and instrumental music composed before 1650. The ensemble was formed in 2017 under the enthusiastic leadership of lutenist Floris De Rycker. Ratas del viejo Mundo finds freedom within an exceptionally sensual musical idiom, comparing period instrumental arrangements with partbooks for the same music.

The instrumentalists’ choices of tonalities and chord inversions contribute to that freedom, as do other options: whether to repeat some passages and omit others, to let a flurry of diminutions flash through slow and stately movements, to vary the rhythm, add and even omit parts… Different printed versions of the same arrangement sometimes contradict each other, whilst the tradition of musica ficta is branded deeply into lute tablature. The initial outstanding quality of the composition, however, is always preserved. In addition to consulting early repertoire transmitted in print or manuscript, Ratas del Viejo Mundo also draws on a wealth of popular, folk, ethnic, or oral traditions in its performances and recordings.

Concerts have takent Ratas del viejo Mundo to prestigious podia in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, Norway and the United States. The ensemble has been artist in residence at Festival of Flanders, Alba Nova and Næstved Early Music Festival.

A high profile collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Hans Op de Beeck entitled Vlaemsch is currently in preparation; an international tour will follow. Ratas del Viejo Mundo’s recordings have received worldwide airplay and acclaim: ´The realisation of ultimate beauty requires the most powerful artistic and technical impulse imaginable. It's definitely in good hands with Ratas del viejo Mundo. [OpusKlassiek].

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