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Carmina Burana: the memoirs of a Medieval abbott
5 musicians and 1 musician/actor

With this program la Reverdie explores the well-known poetic collection Carmina Burana, a manuscript of refined and often surprisingly forthright Latin and German lyrics compiled between the 12th and the early 13th century on the commission of an unknown abbott of Kloster Neustift in Tirol. The texts, both moralistic and amorous, which were known and performed throughout the universities and ecclesiastical circles of all Europe, are a sort ofhighly refined “clerical entertainment” replete with both irony and tender nostalgia: la Reverdie has conceived the work as a sort of “Remembrance of Things Past”; a concert program with both a musical and a dramatic dimension drawn from and inspired by one of the most celebrated of all Medieval manuscripts.

Guillaume Dufay - Missa Sancti Jacobi
(Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico, Q 15, ff.CXXI-CXXXV)

For the coming year, 2006, to celebrate twenty years of activity in researching and performing Medieval music, the ensemble la Reverdie will offer a particularly unique musical program: Guillaume Dufay's monumental Missa Sancti Jacobi, probably composed between 1427 and 1428for the Agostinian church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna.  
This work, which contains among other distinctions the first example of faux-bourdon technique found outside of the British Isles (in the Post-communio section), includes a complete polyphonic setting of both the Ordinary and the Proper of the Mass for the Feast of St. James: a Plenarium. In our performance we added also the motet Rite maiorem Jacobum/Artibus summis, most likely written in the same years as the Mass. The performance includes the participation of instruments, as was common at the time for this sort of "cantilena Mass".
This program can be offered both in the form of a concert, as well as in a full liturgical reconstruction, complete with pre-Tridentine Gregorian liturgy (with the participation of an officiating priest).
The work is conserved in the Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale of Bologna, in the Codex Q15 and the performance is based on a new transcription edited by Claudia Caffagni.

Dante, Petrarca & Boccaccio - Dolci stili of Ars Nova
5 musicians + 1 actor

In celebration of the seven hundredth anniversary of the birth of Francesco Petrarca, a musical-literary production in which the three great masters of the dolce stil nuovo, Dante, Petrarch and Bocaccio, as well as composers of the Italian Ars Nova, are united in a program which presents a number of their greatest masterpieces in an altogether new and compelling guise.
The perfect union of music and poetry distinguishes and unites this unique performance. Apparently the "evergreen" quality of Nature, so constantly and lovingly evoked in the texts - both read and sung - remains ever-constant, yet upon a careful second look the variety of approaches are revealed to be as diverse as they are intensely personal.
Thus the green evoked in the lyrical, Apollinian sprit of Petrarch and Francesco Landini is not at all the same green background of the playful, ribald tales of Boccaccio, evoked in the musical cacce (hunts) of the Ars Nova. Or the subtle, allusive symbolism, at times harsh and unyielding as thorns, which finds expression in the heradic imagery of the music of Jacopo da Bologna and in the Rime Petrose of Dante.
In this program the poetic readings are rendered as an integral part of the production. The language of the three poets changes its colour and atmosphere not only in the content of the words themselves, but in the very manner of its rendering, as if performed upon three different instruments, and the music which is woven together with these texts enters into dialogue with them, recreating, with its own expressive power, at least as many different atmospheres.

A co-production with:
- "Grandezze & Meraviglie" - Festival Musicale Estense - Modena
- "Laus Polyphoniae" - Antwerpen
- "Grandi Appuntamenti della Musica" - Arezzo

Guillaume Dufay - A journey to Italy
6 performers

As the title implies, this program is a journey through musical styles and genres, as well as across cultural and geographical divisions, which offers a glimpse if the extraordinary richness of Italian musical life at the beginning of the 15th century. The center of this musical "itinerary" is of course the 20-year Italian adventure of Guillaume . More than any other European composer before him, Dufay's genius succeded in assimilating, integrating and finally, transcending the pre-existing stylistic distinctions in vogue up to his time, to become the first truly "pan-European" composer.
In order to fully appreciate this vital syncretism of styles which leads to Dufay's greatest masterpieces, we also propose various pieces, most of them unknown, by Italian composers active in the first 30 years of the 1400's. This approach is the fruit of intense musical research in this repertoire, which permitted us to choose the most interesting and attractive pieces, as well as works meaningful for their historical connections.

Miscellaneous programs

Bestiarium - Animals in the music of the Middle Ages
4 performers

The animal kingdom was the ever-present background of all Medieval culture: a discreet, elusive yet fundamental element of every artistic manifestation of the age. Europe in the Middle Ages was teeming with animals - not only in the immense forests which still covered much of the continent: from heraldry to gastronomy, from Scholastic philosophy to manuscript illuminations, animals, far more numerous than their human masters, invaded all of Europe, in the sacred world as well as the profane. The many-sided nature of the animal in Medieval art is present in music as well, and the variety of works presented in this anthology illuminates the immense variety of inspiration that the animal world offered to the creativity of the Middle Ages.

O Tu chara scientia - Music in Medieval thought
5 performers

The discipline of Music, closely tied to Philosophy throught the Middle Ages, was considered a tangible manifestation of the harmony of the celestial spheres, a link between Physics and Metaphysics. In the religious traditions of Medieval Christianity, the rhythms of the liturgy and of monastic life were punctuated by song in the awareness that music was the privileged channel of sacred texts: Laudatio Dei. Monks became theorists and the new systems of musical notation they developed gave life to more and more complex compositions; Polyphony invaded the liturgical repertoire and even the secular realm, and the Science became Ars Musica. Nature served as a boundless source of inspiration, and the sounds and noises of everyday life echo in the compositions of the French and Italian Ars Nova. Dante's Paradiso resounds throughout with music of every sort, not only with angelic psalmody but with the music of Creation, the murmurings of streams, the calls of animals: Musica terrestris.

Insula Feminarum - Medieval echoes of celtic feminity
5 performers

Tir na mBan, Inis Ablach, The Ladies' Castle, Avalon, l'Ile joyeuse...imaginary, feminine "parallel universes" in which an archaic - yet strikingly modern - conception of Woman and her role in the world survived, nonwithstanding the turbulence of centuries of history. The various manifestations through which the fascinating archetypes of Woman were perpetuated, from tradition to tradition, from century to century are the reflections of the forms and symbols of Celtic culture which succeded in propagating themselves throughout the Middle Ages, overcoming geographic and ideological obstacles while undergoing a slow but constant, fertile metamorphosis.

Itinerarium Rome - A musical pilgrimage from the isles of the North to the Papacy
5 performers

The geographical course of this ideal voyage extends from the mists of the Orkney Islands to the hills of the Eternal City; the temporal one from the 9th to the 14th century: an "itinerary" of thousands of miles and hundreds of years which, at first glance, might seem to evoke the spectre of the most extremely heterogeneous of anthologies. Yet the theme of this program, which unites so many diverse melodies, languages and spiritual experiences is one of the most profound and immutable of all the Middle Ages: the irresistable, supernatural attraction of all Christendom towards the Sacred Cities; in the case of Rome doubly sacred by virtue of its universal, imperial and Christian connotations.

Venetiarum Cardines - The Eastern gates of Italy
4 performers

From the time of Paul the Deacon (from whose "Historia" we have borrowed our title) the Northeastern frontiers of the Italian peninsula have nourished a markedly cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic and multilingual culture. The resulting dialogue and "contamination" between various traditions gave birth to an fascinatingly complex and eclectic musical culture: the Alps were never a barrier to the cultural currents which inevitably flowed inward across the passes and mountanous valleys of the North and the East.

Speculum Amoris - Love lyrics from the mystic to the erotic
4 performers

One might imagine this title to be culled from an actual Medieval treatise: an entirely justifiable error, since our title is intended as a copy in style, a pseudo-synonym. The "Speculum" as a literary genre, was typical of the encyclopedic nature of Medival thought. In our "Speculum", the extremes of sacred and profane love reflect themselves in "that extraordinary multiplicity of symbolism of the language of Medieval thought" of which Aron Gurevic so aptly wrote: "All specific sectors of human knowledge, each with its own specific terminology were, in fact, interchangeable; their importance was determined not by how much they were each valued within their own specialized sector, but in the measure in which they trancended these limits".

Suso In Italia Bella - Music in the courts and cloisters of northern Italy
5 performers

This program - whose title quotes Dante's poetic description of Italy's North - reunites various aspects of the musical (and non-musical) culture of that area whose ancient name of "Gallia Cisalpina" had not yet fallen out of use: the Italy beyond Etruria and Magna Graecia. At the foot of the Alps, considered more a bridge of communication than a geographical border, from tha "pan European" spirit of the Carolingian era, Northern Italy conserved intact its cosmopolitan and multilingual vocation. A repertoire of pieces in Italian, Latin, "langue d'oc" and middle High German gives elequent testimony to the lively "transalpine" contacts maintained by courtly and clerical circles.

NoxLux - Mors & Vita Duello
5 performers

NOX/LUX Mors et vita duello (5 performers)

A varied musical itinerary through the Medieval vision of the eternal struggle between Life and Light against Death and Darkness: familiar, yet difficult to grasp in all its subtleties. The perception of Time in the Middle Ages was fundamentally tied to the concrete reality of agricultural and natural phenomena. Its basic subdivisions, reflected in all aspects of life, are bipolar - Night and Day, abundance and famine. A time full of contrasts, as were the Manichaean tendencies of Medieval Europe which saw the supernatural contrast of Good and Evil reflected in the dramatic, cyclic alternation of Birth and Death, Dawn and twilight, summer and winter and Christmas and the Passion of Christ in the liturgical calendar.

Sacred programs

In Festo Sancti Nicholai - A liturgical drama of medieval England
In collaboration with "I cantori Gregoriani": 9 performers

Based upon a 13th century southern English antiphonary (the MS Mm 2g. of the Cambridge University Library) laReverdie has restored a selection of pieces to their exact chronological sequence, interspersing them - in keeping with the practice of liturgical drama - with text readings. Some Anglo-Norman instrumental sequences, associated with a restricted and highly symbolic instrumentarium, have been introduced to underline the scenic element of this sort of "officium/ludus". Particular attention has been given to the gestual repertoire, inspired by contemporary iconographical material, and to the Anglicized pronunciation of Medival Latin as well as the old English vernacular in order to reach the optimum balance between a direct and intelligible text and use of the more "exotic" elements of Medieval sonority and rhetoric.

Sponsa Regis - The Triumph of the Virgin in the works of Hildegard von Bingen
5 performers

Antiphons, responsories and readings all grouped around one of the central elements of the sacred philosophy of Hildegard, perhaps the last great exponent of the serene, harmonious tradition of Medieval Christian Neoplatonism: the privileged, triumphant role of the Virgin Mary: not the mother weeping at the foot of the Cross, but the woman dressed with the sun of Revelation, the "sceptre and diadem of royal dignity". Not a reconstrucion of the liturgy that Hildegard created and practiced, but rather symbolic evocations of a light which in all of 900 years has lost nothing of its splendor.

Historia Sancti Eadmundi - From Dramatic Liturgy to Liturgical Drama
4 performers

The Office for St. Edmund, here performed as a single liturgucal drama, contains elements of the rich cultural material associated with Eadmund Wulfling, last Saxon king of East Anglia, executed by the Danish invasors in the year 870. Of particular interest is the source: the "rediscovered" MS 736 of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, famous for its splendid miniatures, it has been analysed for the first time by laReverdie for its very original and unique musical characteristics.

Lyra mystica - Music and Sanctity
5 performers

The powerful bond that links music to the celestial powers, to the supreme creative forces, to physical and spiritual perfection is a well known theme in practically all human cultures. In the peculiar and highly elevated conception that the Medieval Christian west held of music, the images and archetypes of ancient Paganism, elements of Hellenic philosophy and Latin-Judaic theology are united in rich harmony. All this and much more reveals itself in the majestic Music of the Spheres and in the perpetual glorification of God by the Celestial Hierarchy. This, in short, the Medieval ideal of music: the privileged path of holiness, a miraculous instrument of salvation as well as a specific attribute of the Church Triumphant.

Laude di Sancta Maria - A vigil of "Laude" for the Virgin Mary
8 performers

The program's conception aims to stress the esthetic and spiritual unity of the two surviving Laude manuscripts complete with music, combining five laude from the Cortona manuscript with five from the Florence Laudario according to the principal feast days of the liturgical year. Along this ritual path, marked by the Mysteries and Stations of the Liturgy, parallel to the life of the Church, the devotional activities of the Laudesi companies were concentrated. These lay confraternities held regular "vigils" in which the events of the liturgy were meditated-- and sung. Our "vigil" is of an "archetypical" sort in which a hypothetical confraternity of Laudesi retraces the entire circuit of the liturgical year in a single concert, with all the intensity of emotion which such a concentration of sacred events inevitably entails.

Legenda Aurea - Laude of the Saints from Cortona and Florence
9 performers

The "Legenda Sanctorum" of Jacopo da Varazze (1228-1298), later known as the "Legenda Aurea" was - after the Bible - the most read, most quoted, most paraphrased and most often heard text of the Middle Ages. The laude in honor of the Saints represent the second largest thematic nucleus of the Laudari of Cortona and Florence and can be justly considered "sermons in music and verse", the narrative material of which - when not taken directly from the "Legenda" - is stil concrete evidence of its dissemination in common thought. Utilizing the meters and forms of popular poetry (for example, the Ballata), the Laudesi repertoire draws on the direct simplicity of popular theatre, translating it into a religious language of powerful emotional force. The interpretation of laReverdie, the result of ten years of historical, linguistic, musicological, organological and theatrical research, intends (through the liberal use of vocal and instrumental improvisation) to explore the rich potentialities of this little-known repertoire at the moment of its greatest artistic splendor.

Three audio excerpts of the program, with a slide show of a live concert