Editorial Reviews

You'd never know it from the gorgeous packaging, but this is a reissue, the original album having appeared in 1989. The German medieval group Estampie has since gone on to forge a distinctive performance style influenced by modern electronic genres, but at this point it was still playing it relatively straight. Even here, however, the sound was innovative; well in advance of the Spanish musicians who have explored a heavily Arab-influenced sound in medieval secular song, the group employs the tar, saz, and oud and favor textures dominated by plucked strings and fairly elaborate improvisation. The "songs of women" billing on the cover does not indicate female composers, although the title work was indeed by twelfth century female troubadour Beatriz de Dia. The songs are not by women but about women, songs of courtly love, written from a woman's point of view. This genre was popular enough to have its own designation all over Western Europe -- cantiga de amigo in Iberia, chanson de femme (or chanson de toile) in France, and Frauenstrophe in German lands. Examples from all three languages are included here, with summaries in English and German (including where medieval German is the original language), but no translations. The woman involved is generally pining away for a knight who is errant in either love or war, but sometimes she is in love and enjoying it, and in one song from the Carmina Burana collection on which Carl Orff later based his choral masterwork she is boasting about her sexual exploits. It's sort of a shame not to have a translation on hand for this, but listeners with some modern German will be able to work it out. The music steers a middle path between decorum and excess, avoiding a heavily rhythmic treatment but never lacking enthusiasm. Other recordings have explored the rather slender repertory of surviving songs of this type, but this one still sounds great, and its reissue is welcome. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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