Nature, Love & Other Reveries Pre-Order

This album features a series of pieces, in both instrumental and vocal versions, that fall within Renaissance music of the 16th and part of the 17th centuries, dealing with love, nature, and the reveries of the soul. The music comes from Scotland (tracks 2 and 6), France (tracks 3, 13, 14, and 17), England (tracks 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, and 19), and Spain (tracks 7, 15, and 16).

Love is the main theme in the poetry and music of this era. Joys and misfortunes of love are intertwined with longing, sorrow, and reveries in which nature is often a witness or an interlocutor to it all, with constant references to its elements.

In these songs, the protagonist speaks to forests, rivers, or winds as entities of peace and solitude, sharing their sorrows over lost or unrequited love, their dreams, or their desires. This is the case with titles such as Over The Mountains (track 18), which speaks of love as an invincible force capable of overcoming any obstacle; Claros y frescos ríos (tracks 7 and 15); or Au joly bois (track 3).

In The Peaceful Western Wind (track 11), the author reflects, with deep and quiet admiration, on the arrival of spring, imagining the intervention of figures from Roman mythology: Venus, the goddess of love, revives everything that Saturn, the god of time and the seasons, had destroyed in winter, and thus little Cupid, the god of romantic desire, now takes over the beautiful fields and the hearts of men. However, the poet cannot feel happiness in the face of such wonder and laments because of it. In the end, we discover the cause of so much suffering and grief: his fair lady treats the true love he feels for her with disdain, and he warns her that this attitude will bring her no good.

In pieces like What If a Day (track 12), the theme focuses on more philosophical reflections, dealing with the transience of life and the vanity and insignificance of our joys and adventures, concluding that we are masters of neither time nor destiny.

Most of the songs included here were widely known in their day and appear in various collections published by prominent printers such as Pierre Phalese, or gathered in different manuscripts such as those of John Skene or Robert Edwards.

Some of these pieces were so popular and highly esteemed that other composers created their own versions and adaptations for different instruments. This is the case with the song Doulce mémoire, composed by the Frenchman Claudin de Sermisy, upon which the Spanish composer Diego Ortiz wrote a series of recercadas — that is, variations or glosses.

Francisco Javier García Ruiz
Lillo, 2026