Western music as we know it today—many individual lines of whatever nature combining in whatever manner into a single whole—has its roots in the fourteenth century, and most famously in the pioneering works of Guillaume de Machaut. Why he chose to set his remarkable poetry to music in this way we may never know, but the results continue to hold those who hear it enraptured.

Few groups have matched The Orlando Consort—formed in 1988 specifically to explore this repertoire—in capturing and recording the essence of Machaut. This is the second volume in their Machaut Edition for Hyperion.