Search - Orlando Consort :: Food, Wine, & Song - Music and Feasting in Renaissance Europe

An irresistible combination of great food and music.

12/03/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Food, Wine and Song is an irresistible combination of great food and music. I've even tried one of the recipes - the bread, almond and saffron pudding with a fig crust. It was delicious and preparing it while the CD played was inspiring. It was a perfect way to start this winter cooking season. The packaging is elegant!"

Heavenly music - amazing authentic Renaissance recipes!

Sator | Sydney, Australia | 06/08/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is an absolutely superb CD in every respect. The excellent selection of songs encompasses some of the finest composers of the Late Middle Ages-Renaissance including earlier masters such as Machaut, Binchois, Dufay as well as some exceptional composers of the Prima Prattica such as Isaac and his pupil Senfl. Compositions from France, England, Spain/Portugal, Germany, Italy and Burgandy are all represented too. The Isaac chanson 'Donna di dentro' may well be my favorite of this whole CD.



Equally exciting is the fantastic recipe book that comes with the lavish booklet. I have many a cook book and I can tell you this is as good as any of them and an absolute must if you are a Renaissance music enthusiast. Just as many a great score has laid in museums gathering dust for centuries, so too have many cook books been forgotten and their recipes lost to time. The efforts of many reknown contemporary chefs have been employed to resurrect some of these gems. The food tastes like nothing I have ever tried before - like listening to Renaissance music for the first time. If feels like you have stuck your spoon and knife (forks were a later invention and no self-respecting HIP music lover would eat this food with one!) into a Renaissance still life picture of a lavish meal and started eating.



One suggestion: definitely try the 'orange omelette for pimps and harlots'. Only thing routinely use one whole orange (peeled and put through a blender) AND a couple of tablespoons of a light non-bitter orange marmalade. Skip the extra added sugar and instead add some Cointreau to the mixture. Then serve hot with ice cream as a desert (desert omelettes are a sadly lost art), unless you feel that you HAVE to keep these strictly HIP because they didn't have ice cream in those days - make sure your favourite song from this CD is playing. You will think you have died and gone to heaven.



Hearing the spirit of the Renaissance is one thing but to also see it, taste it, smell it - now that's something else!!! I strongly suggest buying now as these sort of releases then to dissappear and if it does reappear the wonderful CD booklet with its recipes will likely be missing."

A Shopping Cart Full of Treats

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 06/08/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Food, Wine & Song" is a musical sampler of 22 jolly songs from France, England, Italy, Burgundy and Germany over a period roughly from 1200 to 1600. That's a smorgasbord of different musical styles and structures, possibly too much variety to be appreciated as a single recorded 'concert', but the pieces are bound together by the theme of food and drink... and humor, rude, earthy, and lewd. Most of these songs were composed, I suspect, for the amusement of the composers themselves and their friends at social occasions, or else for the at-table revelry of patrons. A few of them make gestures toward respectability -- Machaut's love-song Nes qu'on porroit and a polyphonic motettus from Fountains Abbey, for instance -- but others compensate with shocking immodesty. The Florentine carnival song Canto de' Cardoni is an elaborate metaphor in food for carnal intercourse. La Tricotea is a 'gibberish' song about a lady 'wetting' herself. Ludwig Senfl's drinking song Von Edler Art is all about the pleasures of barfing in one's beard. Fortunately, all the texts of these witty and weird songs are included in the nicely-bound 119 page book that encloses the CD, with apt translations and historical notes.



Along with the texts, Food, Wine & Song includes a small collection of recipes "appropriate for degustation with each selection of music", from 'Frittata with Wild Greens' to 'Saffron Cake' to 'Haddock in Ale'. The recipes were prepared by well-known chefs in England today, based on Medieval and Renaissance sources. I've tried a few, and found them less 'tart' than the songs, but interesting. An experienced cook will be able to fudge them toward her/his own taste.



The main course, of course, is the singing of The Orlando Consort, four jolly gourmets whose appreciation for fine wines has not impaired their virtuosity a whit. No other consort, I think, could combine such perfect tuning and precise ensemble-singing with such lively, high-spirited interpretations. This is music meant for fun. It has to be obvious that the musicians are having fun with it. No sobriety or earnest museum 'authenticity' can bring these songs to life. The Orlandos are not afraid to 'let their hair down'. They can be delicate or raucous, refined or vulgar, as the music requires. Their vocal artistry is truly a feast for the ear."