"Ciascun vuole compor madrial, cacce, ballate":

a journey through the music of Italian Middle Ages

Evidences of Italian medieval monody, even though scarce, show an early expressive vitality and a certain stylistic originality: the fifteen dances included in the manuscript of the British Museum, as well as the laude of the two Tuscan Codes, let us imagine a profane, or in any case non-liturgical musical world more dynamic than we could believe.
It is to this archaic background free from Gregorian chant that the first Italian polyphonists will look at in the Trecento. They will be able to nourish their own autochthonous tradition, with distinctive and definite features, by the transalpine models highly coded in the so-called Ars nova. It will result an export and unique balance between original taste and shared style, between originality and internationality. Giovanni da Cascia, Jacopo da Bologna, Francesco Landini, Gherardello da Firenze, will be able to synthesize a language which will have followers all over Europe and which is at the basis of the following great polyphony: if Machaut’s France sealed the gothic art, we can say that Landini’s Italy opens the doors of the polyphonic Renaissance art.
The Galinverna group in this show moves along this line which goes from the medieval monody to the Renaissance polyphony, leaving from Northern Italy to go progressively down towards the middle, affecting both vocal and instrumental forms. It is a trip attentive to sources, to their
origins and context; but it is also a tour in the tour, a tale of the way the music and the culture intertwine with winding roads, following intricate networks .In this concert gives the ensemble, thank their experience in other medieval repertoires (Spanish, Arab and Sephardic, sacred music…), a living image of Italian medieval music, trying to restore the glamour of a synthesis and at the same time of foundation art.