Leuven Chansonnier – Sollazzo Ensemble

Presenting the first complete recording of the Leuven Chansonnier!
In 2015 the Alamire Foundation, the International Centre for the Study of Music in the Low Countries, was approached by an art historian working on behalf of an art dealer, seeking musicological advice about a small music manuscript. Subsequent research quickly unveiled its significance: the manuscript was identified as a previously unknown fifteenth-century chansonnier. Since the original owner could not yet be ascertained, it was named the “Leuven Chansonnier,” reflecting its new location in the Library of Voices, one of the buildings that the Alamire Foundation occupies on the historic Park Abbey site in Leuven (BE). The songbook is of exceptional value. It transmits 50 compositions, consisting of one religious work and 49 French chansons, 12 of which survive in no other source. Although no composers’ names are mentioned, other sources identify the composers of 26 of its works; these include such leading fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish polyphonists as Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnoys, and Firminus Caron. The creators of the other 24 chansons remain anonymous for the time being.