Guillaume de Machaut:
Motets, Mass music & songs by Machaut from the Ivrea Codex

The Clerks' Group
directed by Edward Wickham

Signum is delighted to announce the debut disc of the Gramophone Award winning Clerks' Group on Signum Records.

This disc is a programme of 14th-century motets and mass movements represents two of the most important sources of French medieval music.

The Ivrea Codex now lives in the Chapter library of the cathedral of Ivrea, a small town in the foothills of the Italian Alps, south of the modern ski resort of Aosta (home to an important 15th-century music manuscript). This may seem an unexpected area in which to find major sources of medieval music, but in fact the position of these towns on one of the main routes across the Alps between France and Italy readily explains their importance in the Middle Ages. They lay on roads that linked centres of power, and accordingly they grew in importance themselves, sustaining cathedrals with musical traditions that provided a natural home for collections of sophisticated polyphony.