arkivmusic.com
Raumklang, Talanton TAL 90001
2010
Johannes LEGRANT (fl. ca. 1420-1440)
1. Se liesse est de ma partie [5:00]
Rondeau, Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Guillaume Du FAY (ca. 1397-1474)
2. Ce jour de l'an [2:13]
Rondeau, Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library, Oxford
3. Seigneur Leon [2:14]
Rondeau, Ms. Pix., Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
4. Vassilissa ergo gaude [2:47]
Motette, Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library Oxford
Beltram FERAGUT (ca. 1385-ca. 1450)
5. Francorum nobilitati [3:24]
Motette, Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library, Oxford
6. Ave maria (instr.) [2:26]
Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Guillaume Du FAY
7. C'est bien raison [12:53]
Ballade, Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library Oxford
Ebreo da PESARO (ca. 1420 - 1484)
8. Falla con misuras (instr.) [1:34]
Ms. 431, Biblioteca Comunale, Perugia
Guillaume Du FAY
9. Las que feray? [4:26]
Rondeau, Ms. Can. Misc. 213, Bodleian Library Oxford
10. Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae
[3:20]
Motette, Ms. Riccardiana 2794, Florenz
Manuel CHRYSAFES (15. Jh.)
11. Threnos [9:50]
Ms. 1120, Kloster Iviron
Theodora Baka · Gesang
EX SILENTIO
Dimitris Kountouras · Blockflöte & Leitung
Elektra Miliadou · Fidel
Andreas Linos · Fidel
Markellos Chryssikopoulos · Orgel
ENSEMBLE ARKYS
Giorgos Kyriakakis · Leitung & Gesang
Sophia Baltatzi, Angelina Kartsaki, Oliver Leege, Makis Tsamallkos,
Panagiotis Zacharakis · Gesang
Produktion: Dimitris Kountouras
Tonaufnahme /Schnitt: Sebastian Pank
Aufgenommen: 4.-7. Februar 2010 in der Andreaskirche in Berlin/Wannsee
NELL' AUTUNNO DI BISANZIO
THE WANING OF BYZANTIUM
MONOΣΤΙΧΟN
ΕΙΣ ΤΗΝ
ΣEΛΗΝΗΝ ·
Νυκτερινούς
άκτίνας ές ήμáς
πέμπε, σελήνη
MONOSTICO ALLA LUNA · Mandaci, luna, i tuoi notturni raggi
Angelo Poliziano, Epigrammata
Graeca
In many ways the quattrocento must have been an exciting
century for Italy as well as for the rest of Europe. Radical changes
were taking place in every field, from politics and religion to the
structure and outlook of intellectual life. It was also a century of
contrasts and upheaval. The Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) was still
raging while the Council of Constance (1414-18) was bringing an end to
the schism within the Catholic Church.
Italian humanism in the arts and intellectual life in general was
displacing the centuries old schools of scholastic philosophy. The
humanists themselves couldn't wait to read the ancient writers in their
original languages. It was the kind of demand that was soon met by the
scores of Greek scholars fleeing to and taking up residence in Italy
from the weakened Byzantine empire. The momentous contact between the
Greek East and the Roman West occurred during the long Council of
Ferrara/Florence (1438-39). From a narrowly doctrinal and political
viewpoint the council may have achieved nothing, but scholars from the
two convening sides discovered a shared interest in matters linguistic,
literary, and even aesthetic.
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to Mohammed II forced large numbers
of learned exiles to seek refuge mostly in the north of the Italian
peninsula where they received prestigious teaching positions in places
such as Mantua, Padua, Pavia, Milan and Florence, to mention but a few.
The manuscripts - rare copies of authors only dreamed of in the West -
the visitors brought with them to their Italian home instantly found
the eager readerships of the humanists whose researches in the spirit
of both the Judaeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman past received an
unprecedented boost. The related fields of history, archaeology and
philology could now be based on primary sources that also facilitated
cross-insemination and textual confirmation. While medieval pastourelles
and carmina bucolica, to take an isolated example, were already
known even before the time of Dante and Boccaccio; access to the newly
discovered idylls of Theocritus injected strikingly fertile ideas about
form into the arts in general and, eventually, into the creative
institutions that would, in time, be known as the "arcadian"
communities across all Europe. Latin language writers like Cicero, Ovid
and Virgil were re-read and commented on a new basis, to be sure, but
the earth-shaking change was the discovery of Greek, the original
language of Homer, the dramatists, and the rhetoricians. Greek ushered
in fresh ways of looking at the self and nature through the eyes
particularly of Aristotle, the Corpus Hermeticum, Plato and the
Neo-Platonists. The Neoplatonic academy was founded in Florence by
Marsilio Ficino soon after meeting the Greek philosopher Georgios
Gemistos Plethon who was lecturing on Plato during the Council of
Ferrara. Ficino is credited with the translation of the whole oeuvre of
Plato into Latin, the lingua franca of Western Europe at the time. The
poet and Hellenist Angelo Poliziano wrote the first Greek epigrams of
his time, in admiration and appreciation of the language and the style
of the Greek authors. Poliziano's epigrams are no mere imitations. They
are critical thought that both engages the models and also moves beyond
them.
Together with an enduring classical revival in architecture and the
visual arts, and of equal importance, we must add, is the emerging
study of ancient rhetoric. It was a field of analysis and application
that helped the humanists to better conceptualize the relationship
between music and the "grammatical" arts in the familiar "trivium" of
the liberal arts.
The Music
From a sociological standpoint, fifteenth-century Italy was practically
overrun by Franco-Flemish musicians who popularized their brand of
polyphony and who worked as singers and composers in all the key
musical centers of the country.
And although the humanist rhetoricians' approach was to imitate the
ancient prototypes that gave precedence to the semantic, or "affective"
dimension of a particular text, the prevalent style of northern
polyphony still embodied the medieval ideal of a musical composition as
a solid organization intended to be admired primarily as an abstract
construct.
Most representative among the "northern" composers of the early quattrocento
is without doubt Guillaume Du Fay. Since his first arrival in Italy
around the 1420s, he experienced the humanistic spirit of Italian
courts such as the Malatesta's in Rimini and, later, the Este's in
Ferrara and the Medici's in Florence. This well-traveled cosmopolita
composer also came to know the face and culture of late Byzantium. He
traveled to Patras and the Peloponnesus around 1425 and wrote a motet
for the marriage of a Malatesta princess with the prince of Morea, as
the Peloponnesus was then called. Finally, also, by way of grieving
over the fate of the Eastern Orthodox Church he wrote a lament for it.
The present recording includes Du Fay's and his contemporaries' secular
music dealing with two important historical events regarding Byzantium:
the council of Ferrara/Florence mentioned earlier, and the fall of
Constantinople (1453) to the Ottoman Turks.
The Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae is
the only surviving lament of a cycle of four pieces written for the
fall of Constantinople and of the Eastern Church. It is difficult to
classify this French style chanson-motet with a Latin text in the
tenor, apparently patterned after the biblical Lamentations of
Jeremiah. Musical historians have used different names for it like
"Latin chanson" ("cantio latina", Besseler), "motet-cantilena"
(Planchart), even "French work of unusual form" (Fallows).
The Byzantine Threnos (θρήνος,
lament) was written for the same purpose by Manuel Chrysafes. He was a
Greek composer and music theorist at the service of the Basilica of
Hagia Sophia as lampadarios (first singer of the left choir)
and singer at the imperial court in Constantinople around the years of
the fall in the 1450s. The text is borrowed from the Psalm of David no.
79 (according to the Greek numbering no.78) verses 1-8.
Du Fay's C'est bien raison was dedicated to Niccoló
d'Este III, prince of Ferrara, and composed probably around 1433. To
the same patron was addressed the chanson Francorum nobilitati
by the Franco-Flemish composer and former organist of the cathedral of
Milan Beltram Feragut. Niccoló d'Este was the host of the
Council of Ferrara in 1438 that was later moved to Florence. Both
chansons come out of the Oxford MS 213 together with the Ave Maria
by the same composer, performed here in an instrumental version. The
other instrumental piece on this recording, Falla con misuras,
is by the dance master Magister Guglielmo also known as Ebreo da
Pesaro, and is a written down improvisation on a given tenor.
Most of Du Fay's secular music was composed during his first and middle
composing periods. The two rondeaux, Ce jour de l'an and Las
que feray, are set on French texts like most of his chansons. The
former celebrates the New Year's Eve, while the latter is a strongly
"affective," desperate love song.
We know very little about the life of Johannes Legrant. The rondeau Se
liesse est de ma partie is one of his five surviving secular
pieces. The Seigneur Leon comes from Du Fay's "opera dubbia".
Attributed to Du Fay by Prof. Dragan Plamenac, this piece was possibly
„destined" or addressed to Leonard of Chios, the Archbishop of
Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos in 1444, but may also have been
composed for the 1442 coronation of Leonello d'Este in Ferrara. Vasilissa
Ergo gaude, probably Du Fay's earliest motet, was composed in 1420
for the marriage of Theodore of Morea, son of the Byzantine Emperor
Manuel Palaiologos to the princess of Rimini, Cleofe Malatesta.
Dimitris Kountoura