Rec-date: 2010

Medieval poets took the famous words by Virgil as their motto for an entire literary era: “Amor vincit omnia” (Love conquers all). This aphorism shaped the character of Western lyrical poetry right back to the time of the Troubadours who began to travel between different courts in the South of France with their art-form which subsequently became established as “minnesong”. The subject of love on a variety of levels runs through the entire CD as a common theme: courtly love in the chansons by the Countess Beatritz of Diá and the monophonic Italian songs of the Codex Rossi, the adoration of the Virgin Mary in works by Oswald von Wolkenstein, and in the Cantigas d’amigo of the troubador Martin Codax. His famous chansons can be discovered in numerous different recordings but the Ensemble a chantar intersperses individual pieces with instrumental interludes, transforming the Cantigas d’amigo into a single unified entity. The missing melody of the sixth Cantiga has been replaced here by a new composition.