An outrageous sound for the people of the Middle Ages and a puzzle for our ears today: the mediaeval polyphonic motet has been wrongfooting every listener for the past 700 years. Virtuoso music confounds patterns of expectation, accumulations of text conceal mysterious symbols and melodies wriggle out of their Gregorian straitjacket. Counterpoint also shifts up a gear, with vocal polyphony becoming an intellectual latticework. ‘Ars nova’ was the name of the ‘new art’ that unleashed a genuine musical revolution in the 14th century. Sollazzo Ensemble ascends to the highest celestial spheres with devilishly crafty works such as Lunne pleine d’umilité and Apollinis eclipsatur/Zodiacum signis: pinnacles of an age in which compositional conventions had to make way for artistic freedom, and the art of the motet spiralled up to an ambitious climax.
Program
Works by J. Ciconia, F. Landini, G. da Firenze, M. da Perugia and Anon. from the Montpellier Codex, Robertsbridge Codex, Laudario da Firenze, Parma Manuscript & CZ-Pu MS XI.E.9
Performers
Carine Tinney, soprano | Eugénie de Mey, mezzo-soprano | Jonatan Alvarado, Lior Leibovici, tenor | Christoph Sommer, lute | Natalie Carducci, vielle | Roger Helou, organetto | Anna Danilevskaia, vielle and artistic leader