Medieval Recipe

One is struck by the overwhelming majority of pieces in honour of the Virgin Mary in the extant sources of the School of Notre-Dame. Indeed, the rich and many-faceted devotion to Our Lady, which characterized the Middle Ages and reached its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was itself paralleled by the secular devotion to the ideal Lady of chivalry sung by troubadour and trouvere alike.

Vita Nova includes four pieces by Bryars in which ECM appeared to be, at least partially, attempting to cash in on the new age-y vogue of the early '90s for the sort of quasi-medieval music made relatively popular by assorted singing monks, Arvo Pärt, and the Hilliard Ensemble with Jan Garbarek. Indeed, that latter group is on hand here to perform "Glorious Hill," and the results are as blandly attractive as the listener might guess given the following recipe: Take a mushily mystical text (in Latin), set to vaguely medieval sounding music, and spice with a dash of chromaticism and a pinch of minimalism. It's all handsomely produced and sung but terribly precious and overly palatable.