I have set my hert so hy - Love & Devotion in Medieval England is the title of 2015 Avie release from the Dufay Collective in collaboration with the female vocal trio Voice. The program is a mix of 14th- and 15th-century songs of courtly love along with a selection of English carols and a closing instrumental dance suite.
Manuscript Sources
The title track, "I have set my hert so hy" is, like all the other tracks on this disc, anonymous. It has been preserved in a manuscript at the Oxford Bodleian library. This Oxford manuscript along with one held at the Cambridge library are the main sources from which the Dufay Collective draws the music for this recording. Additionally, a manuscript found recently in a notebook among the Gresly-Drakelow family papers in the Matlock archives in Derbyshire includes a number of instrumental dances—a rarity in medieval manuscripts. A compilation of those dances closes this recording.
Relatively few pieces from the English Middle Ages have survived, and even fewer have come down to us with both text and music preserved. In some cases, texts of songs survive, but there is no music to go with it. For the songs on this CD in which only the lyrics have been passed down, William Lyons, director of the Dufay Collective, has either fit the abandoned texts to borrowed melodies from similar works, or else written his own melodies in a style he imagined appropriate.
The Dufay Collective and Voice
Formed in 1987, the English Dufay Collective is directed by William Lyons who also plays recorder, double pipes, flute, and whistle. The other performers of the Dufay Collective include Rebecca Austen-Brown on recorder, vielle, rebec, and gittern, Jon Banks on gittern and harp, as well as Jacob Heringman who also plays gittern and lute. The Dufay Collective collaborates on this recording with the ensemble Voice: Emily Burn, Victoria Couper, and Clemmie Franks.
*Note: In the original audio, the podcast host incorrectly references texts in Old English when they are actually in Middle English. This has since been corrected.
