Gaston Fébus was an extremely lucky man and he seems to have known quite well how blessed he was, if not immune. He combined the arrogance of a successful conqueror with an admirable, even legendary, largesse. Much of this generosity was directed into the arts and some of the products of Fébus' court are still prized today. In music, he was fortunate or wise enough to have some of the most original and daring composers in Europe working for him, and a particularly refined style of late medieval music called the ars subtilior flourished under his care. Le Mont Aon is a typical work of the ars subtilior, combining an adventurous sense of harmony and melody with difficult rhythms. It's a music conceived by its creators as being by the best composers of Europe, for the finest of Europe's elite that only an educated ear was expected to be capable of appreciating. Almost all of the surviving music of the extraordinary ars subtilior comes from a single manuscript called the Chantilly Codex that is actually a copy of a manuscript produced at Fébus' court. In the ars subtilior spirit, the feel of Le Mont Aon is highly artificial, like a strange and fascinating toy. The artistic values engaged in it are mainly about skill, cleverness, and the flattery of music as ornament to the throne. As that, Le Mont Aon is highly enjoyable, with a fine thread of chromaticism running through it and a strange, lopsided rhythmic character. But while the texts of many of the other works from Fébus' court are blatant and extravagant gestures of brown-nosing, Le Mont Aon is slightly more subtle in its approach. Fébus is first mentioned as living in loving friendship with the nine muses. The ways in which he benefits from this are then implied by then enumerating the benefits their blessings bring, if one can, as Fébus has, win their love. His court, then, is shown to be like the mythic Aon, although it never actually says so outright. Such exaggerated claims were, funny enough, more or less fulfilled in Fébus' strangely successful, glamorous life. Fébus' somehow still seems, compared to so many other despots of Europe, quite a shining moment. It's significant that he gave holdings at his death to the French throne; all that he was rose and fell with him. His is as extraordinary a story, and as much the product of a unique moment in history, as the strange, beguiling music that flourished with him.

© All Music Guide