Alamire: T'Andernaken à5 from Lockdown

The Royal Street Recorder Consort plays one of literally dozens of settings of the Dutch song "T'Andernaken, al op den Rijn" (In Andernach, on the Rhine) which was very popular between about 1430 and 1540. The text is in Middle Dutch and describes a conversation between two girls about their amorous exploits as overheard by a current lover.

This setting is the only work attributed with any certainty to Pierre Alamire (ca.1470-1536) who otherwise was a music copyist and was actually a spy to King Henry VIII of England for a time until he discovered that there was a counter spy to him upon which he never returned to England. It survives in two manuscripts, one as played here and the other without the fifth “vagant” part played by the second bass recorder. I rather prefer the five-part version as I think it’s more interesting in texture, but such “vagant” (meaning “wanderer”) parts were considered optional anyway. I learned this setting back in 1998 at Brandeis University in a concert of Flemish music given by the Early Music Ensemble.