With Alkemie’s concert on January 30, Capitol Early Music opens another door in the mansion of early music. Our past concerts have featured music of the Baroque, the late Renaissance, and even contemporary works specifically composed for early instruments. This time we’ll hear vocalists as well as instrumentalists performing the wondrous polyphony of the French Ars Nova and Italian Trecento styles.
The composers featured on this concert represent the flowering of this period. Guillaume Machaut (1300-1377), renowned for his poetry as well as his music, was educated and lived much of his life in Reims, within the orbit of the French royal court. His compositions exploited the rhythmic and melodic possibilities of the Ars Nova mensural notation and served to establish the importance of the French poetic forms well into the fifteenth century. The Franco-Flemish Johannes Ciconia (1370-1412) worked primarily in Italy: Rome, Pavia and Padua. He composed in both the Italian style, using Trecento notation with the smooth florid upper voices characteristic of that style, and in the French “ars subtilior” style, which developed the rhythmic and notational possibilities of Ars Nova notation to their utmost. Guillaume DuFay (1397-1474), born and educated in Cambrai, was regarded in his lifetime as his era’s preeminent composer of polyphony. Widely traveled in Italy, Savoy and the Low Countries, his music masterfully incorporates the traits of these locales as well as of English music that was captivating the Continent.
Wonderful music performed by an ensemble that specializes in this period!