Chansons nouvelles. Parisian Chansons and Dances, 1530-1550

This irresistible album by Renaissance-specialized ensemble Virelai sheds a light on a very interesting period of French music. At the end of the 1520s, Pierre Attaingnant developed a revolutionary printing procedure that caused a boom of music publishing and stimulated the flowering of a rich secular repertoire, mostly made of dances (branles, galliards, pavanes…), but also a nascent catalogue of spinet pieces, and songs from the Parisian tradition transcribed for solo voice and lute.