The Loire, the royal river, has witnessed the births and welcomed the visits of many artists along its banks. One can still visit Rabelais's birthplace in La Devinière, a stone's throw from Seuilly, the scene of the famous "picrocholine war". Preserved forever in its historic setting, the house where Balzac stayed in Saché has become a museum; and the memory of Clément Janequin is present in Anjou, in Angers, and in Montreuil-Bellay.
This glorious past is evoked in this album by the Ensemble Clément Janequin. Driven by Dominique Visse, it contains a selection of sacred and secular works that could be heard in the many royal castles of the Loire Valley, which is now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
During the reign of Francis I around 1520, music punctuated the acts and events of everyday life, with the plain-chant Chapel (for twelve singers) and Chapel music for most common obligations. Blaring trumpets were the attributes of power as were timpani, fifes and drums. This official, military-sounding music was balanced out by more intimate music devoted to delighting the senses. The innumerable musical settings of poems by the King, Marot, Chappuys and Mellin de Saint-Gelais, himself a noted singer and lutenist, as well as their arrangements for instruments, testify to an intense collaboration of which the King's Chamber was the crucible. This collaboration continued after 1550 and saw the emergence of the new poetic generation of Ronsard and du Bellay. © François Hudry/Qobuz