The words sumptuous and ambitious both apply to this release by soprano
Montserrat Figueras, accompanied by musicians from the orbit of early music miracle-maker
Jordi Savall. Consider the hardbound, 170-page booklet, with no fewer than 44 reproductions of medieval Iberian artwork and music manuscript, many in full color. It's true that the 170 pages allow for the rendering of
Figueras's notes into six languages: Catalan, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Song texts, which are in various languages including Arabic, Hebrew, and Basque along with various Iberian forms of the Middle Ages, are also translated into these six languages. But
Figueras's essay is a weighty thing in itself. She proposes nothing less than an evolutionary typology of women as musically represented in medieval Spain, dividing her 15 pieces into the categories of "Femina Antiqua" (Woman of Antiquity), "Femina Nova" (The New Woman, among whom are classed the female poets who blossomed in the era of the troubadours), "Femina Ludica" (The Playful Woman), "Femina Mistica" (The Mystic Woman), "Femina Mater" (Woman the Mother), and "Femina Gemens" (The Lamenting Woman). Apparently these categories are
Figueras's own, not drawn on ideas of other writers -- it wouldn't be the first time performers led scholars to a new understanding of medieval music, but it will be interesting to see how the disc is received in specialist circles. She discusses the individual works, whose themes cross ethnic lines and the line between sacred and secular, both in a characteristically Spanish way. And each thematic category is accompanied by its own poetic "glosa" or gloss, written by
Manuel Forcano.