Everyday life in 14th Century music
A polemic refusal of the poetical language of the time, whose artificiality bordered tedium; a nostalgic call to nature; a mildly anticlerical display of positive worldliness; a simple expression of the joy of life: these and other reasons induced the Italian composers of the 14th Century to represent some of the most commonplace aspects of daily life in many of their compositions.
They are very unlikely themes for Medieval poetics, yet fresh and very particular both for us as for the Italian ars nova composers. They sing of bathes in the river, deer hunts, fires, washing, lasagne recipes and the figures that sing their songs in the first person – with a strong preference for direct speech that adds a sense of immediacy to these tableaux vivants – are sellers in the market place, women at the well, girls picking flowers, barking dogs and bleating sheep. It is not uncommon that in these instances the rules of poetical form stand little chance of being heralded seeing as preference is accorded to a free succession of ungrammatical utterances and blocks of sentences. This informal form is also mirrored in the music that develops the caccia or hunt theme – a canon devoid of all metric restrictions – with the melodic flow gladly enlivened by blatantly descriptive and onomatopoeic intrusions. The Modo Antiquo concert focuses on this particular thematic vein that runs throughout the music of the 14th Century and which, with its immediate humanity, will bring the listener closer to this art: after all it is quite uplifting to hear that then as today it always rains on washing days.
MODO ANTIQUO
BETTINA HOFFMANN
LUCIA SCIANNIMANICO, voice
MARCO SCAVAZZA, voice
FEDERICO MARIA SARDELLI, recorder, transverse flute, shawm
UGO GALASSO, recorder, shawm, pipe and tabor, triangle, drum
PIERO CALLEGARI, slide trumpet, oliphant, shawm, tambourine
BETTINA HOFFMANN, fiddle, rebec, trumpet marine
GIAN LUCA LASTRAIOLI, lute, citole, dulcimer
PROGRAMME
Andrea Stefani, I' senti' matutino, ballata
Anonym, Isabella, stampita
Ghirardello da Firenze, Tosto che l'alba del bel giorno appare, caccia
Anonym, Saltarello
Ghirardello da Firenze, I'vo' bene a chi vol bene a me, ballata
Vincenzo da Rimini, In forma quasi, caccia
Anonym, Trotto
Anonym, De mia farina fo le mie lasangne, ballata
Anonym, Non posso far buchato che non piova, ballata
Anonym, Dança amorosa, stampita
Anonym, Deh, tristo mi topinello, ballata
Anonym, Saltarello
Niccolò da Perugia, Dappoi che 'l sole i dolçi raçi asconde, caccia
Anonym, Lamento di Tristano e Rotta
Lorenzo da Firenze, A poste messe veltr' e gran mastini, caccia
