In Troubadours, the idea was not historical accuracy but rather an imagined ambition of what poetic music could be today, carried by a very simple instrumentation: two wind instruments, a drone, and a few percussions. Sylvain Rifflet drew inspiration from recordings of secular medieval music (often by unknown authors).
"I had never made a 'modal' album, and I wanted to try this adventure while ensuring I stayed as far as possible from the clichés of a saxophonist venturing into modal music. In that case, the reference to Coltrane is quite complex to avoid. By turning to a hybrid sound: modal music and Indian drones, I had broader and more interesting musical possibilities for this project."
- Troubadours
A troubadour (from Occitan trobador: "finder," trobairitz in the feminine: "finder") is a medieval composer, poet, and musician writing in the Occitan language, who performed or had jongleurs or minstrels perform their poetic works.
- Modal music: Monodic medieval music was initially accompanied only by percussion or a drone. Tension/release phenomena were truly the sources of modal music. This translates into playing on a mode (a series of notes) and then combining these phenomena with the note played by the drone. This is the basic principle of Indian music, in a very
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