Home listening - Leonardo the musician

The Guardian 0

Doulce Mémoire give us Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest hits, sort of. Plus, a virtuoso turn from Giovanni Antonini

• The anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death is a good moment to remember that as well as being a great artist, inventor and observer of everything, Leonardo was regarded as a great musician. He invented instruments, studied acoustics, and was a famed singer who accompanied himself on the lira da braccio. In the absence of any surviving pieces by him, in Leonardo da Vinci: La musique secrète (Alpha Classics), the ensemble Doulce Mémoire has tried to unlock the meanings of some of Leonardo’s finest paintings by matching them with contemporary scores.

Apart from naughtily turning a version of an anonymous chanson into “Mona Lisa pulchra”, there are no direct links. The performances under Denis Raisin Dadre are rather cool; well produced, with fine, large-format Leonardo reproductions, the album is perhaps best used as general cultural context for one of our greatest minds, rather than being slavishly followed for its sometimes forced connections.