In 1688, organist and professor Georg Daniel Speer published his Musicalisch-Türkischer Eulen-Spiegel (Musical-Turkish Owlglass, "Owlglass" here referring to the mischievous and bawdy trickster of German folk-legend) and he had already spent a good portion of his long life yomping around a war-torn Europe, sometimes as a mercenary, or as a trumpeter or drummer in the Hungarian army in its war against the Turks. His wanderings even brought him to Constantinople: he had seen countries, horrors, and many civilisations. His work sets to music the anonymous picaresque tales of Ungarischer oder Dacianischer Simplicissimus (Hungarian or Dacian Simplicissimus , a "Simplicissimus" being a kind of village idiot) which had come out a little before, and in which the hero Lompyn travels musically across the countries affected by the Turkish invasion. The ensemble Ars Antiqua Austria and its conductor Gunar Letzbor have distilled two distinct albums, one narrating the military adventures – the misfortunes of a simple soldier whose main preoccupation is saving his skin – the other dealing with some rather below-the-belt escapades. This music, simple, popular, spirited, which rests on just a few violins, a theorbo, a gallichon (yes, there is such a thing!), a guitar, and a portative organ, is surely a very faithful reflection of the music that was being made in the countryside in those days; and the voice of the tenor Markus Miesenberger playfully renders the terrors, the desires, the cowardice and the little heroisms and crimes of the pitiable character as if you were there at the end of the 17th Century. © SM/Qobuz