MUSICA RESERVATA
Jantina Noorman (mezzo-sop); Grayston Burgess (counter-tenor); Nigel Rogers , Edgar Fleet (tenors)
John Sothcott (recorder): David Munrow (shawm, crumhorn); Bernard Thomas (crumhorn): Ruth David , Daphne Webb (rebecs): Desmond Dupre pr (rebec, viol); Michael Morrow (lute): John Leach (dulcimer psaltery); Jeremy Montague (percussion) conductor JOHN BECKETT (organ) (Recorded at a public concert on 7 February in the Purcell Room, Royal Festival Hall, London Part 1
Italian music of the 14th century was essentially a secular, a renaissance, art. Its master-pieces are miniature ones: song settings of the fixed verse forms, in which the vocal parts often demand considerable virtuosity. The subjects of the verse reflect most aspects of the leisured life: hunting, fishing, love-making, moralising.
No instruments are expressly called for in the manuscripts, but we know from contemporary literature, painting, and sculpture that these songs were commonly performed with instrumental accompaniment and sometimes by instruments alone. One of the rare collections of purely instrumental music of the time contains keyboard settings of several Italian songs, and two of these settings will be heard in today's programme.