The music of angels
We had to capture the emotion. The powerful frescoes by Taddeo di Bartolo present us with images of such instrumental richness, such bold inventions of timbre, such rhythmic pulsations, such choreic rapture, that immediately, impulsively they are translated into music within us. What do we see in detail on the ceiling of the Siena chapel? Four groups of angels, playing and dancing, arranged symmetrically in the sixteen sections of the four cross vaults. We find painstakingly detailed descriptions of viellas, rebecks, psalteries, lutes, harps, but also shawms, cymbals, large castanets and even the double flute which in some instances is symbolically associated with the Devil. What is surprising is the total lack of singing. The movements of the dancers are free, voluptuous, stunning. Nothing could be more removed from the pious chorus of a religious chant, and the solemn processional step. The praise of God, in the later stages of the Middle Ages, inspires stronger artistic hues.
If those dance steps are irretrievably lost, we musicians are more fortunate. We have vast testimonies of the extra-liturgical music of the 13th Century and the stylistic resemblance with contemporary lay music would seem to confirm from inside the world of musical language what Taddeus from the outside is suggesting. In fact, in search for repertoire to go with the images we have had to climb over parvis fence: if his angels dance only to the sound of instruments, why deny them the Istampite and the Salterelli, the typical 12th Century instrumental dances, often handed down, coincidentally, in ecclesiastic contexts?
This is the music Modo Antiquo has always sought out and performed with its ever expanding collection of instrument and its fierce commitment to rhythm, and its concert will go well beyond the philological: performed on instruments faithfully reconstructed according to the pictures by Taddeo and other contemporary painters, it is not meant merely as a form of reminiscence. The symmetry of the Siena frescoes will guide the choice of instrumentation, but the emotion that bursts forth goes well beyond a reconstruction of a supposed idea of performance.
MODO ANTIQUO
BETTINA HOFFMANN
FEDERICO MARIA SARDELLI flutes, recorder, shawms
UGO GALASSO pipe and tabor, shawm, cymbals, triangle
PIERO CALLEGARI slide trumpet, shawm, recorders
BETTINA HOFFMANN fiddle, rebec
DANIELE POLI harp, lute, dulcimer, tambourines
GIAN LUCA LASTRAIOLI lute, citole, dulcimer
Program
North vault: angels with fiddle, flutes, harp, cymbals
Francesco Landini, Dilectus meus misit, anonym contrafactum of Lasso! di donna vana
Jacopo da Bologna, Nel mio parlar, lauda-ballata
West vault: angels with rebec, double pipe, tambourine
anonym, Salve virgo pia, lauda
anonym, Facciam laude a tuct’i sancti, lauda
East vault: angels with pipe and tringle, citole, fiddle, dulcimer
anonym, Regina sovrana di grande pietade, lauda
anonym, Altissima luce, lauda
South vault: angels with shawm, lute, dulcimer, drums
Francesco Landini, Creata fusti o Vergine Maria, anonym contrafactum of Questa fanciull'amor
anonym, Gloria in cielo e pace in terra, lauda
Toto cœlo
anonym, Principio di virtù, istampita
Francesco Landini, Po’ che da morte nessuno si ripara, lauda contrafacta of Po’ che partir convien
Ghirardello da Firenze, Gloria
anonym, Trotto
Ghirardello da Firenze, Agnus Dei
anonym, Salterello
