CLÉMENT JANEQUIN Le Chant des Oyseaulx, Polyphonic Chansons Ensemble Clément Janequin, Dominique Visse

ʻIn the 16th century birdsong certainly constituted an essential aspect of that broad stream of natural imitations which runs through the musical aesthetics of the Humanist Age: Human or Artificial Music hearkened to Natural Music in an effort to copy it and thereby to raise itself to the summits of Parnassus. [ . . . ] Janequin never lost his taste for bird-song, from the first attempts of 1520 down to the last chansons of the 1550s. It is at the very core of his creative activity, at the heart of that poetic-musical game, the polyphonic chansonʼ (J.-P. Ouvrard). This recording has never left the harmonia mundi catalogue in nearly thirty years, and is still regarded as a benchmark!
This title was released for the first time in 1985.