The Music of Dante

Ensemble Micrologus' concert takes us to immerse ourselves in a universe in which the art of music was undergoing a profound transformation: from the epigones of the Ars Antiqua to the first steps of the Ars Nova. It corresponds to the end of feudalism and the rise of merchants (the bourgeoisie), operating in the Communes of the Center as well as in the Seignories of the cities/states of Northern Italy.

Thus an excursus takes place among the music of the most important troubadours of the 13th century, whom Dante cites, because he knows them well, elevating them to his masters, compared with the nostrani, creators of the earliest production of songs and ballads, the latter without direct evidence of their compositions. That is why in the program there are some reconstructions of songs, also on Dante's text, according to the technique of the time of contrafactum (adaptation to a preconstituted melody).

In the first part of the concert, music associated with court, or city, pipers and trumpets frames from to various moments: first, that of spiritual love of laud singing, adopted by city brotherhoods. This is followed by the poetics of the troubadours. Dante himself testifies in De Vulgari Eloquentia that the art of the troubadours still survived and influenced later music. He praises Bertran de Born, the poet of arms, Arnault Daniel, the poet of love, and Guirault de Borneilh, of rectitudo. And then Folquet de Marseilla. Another great, Bernard de Ventadorn, is mentioned in Paradise. In the second part, the sound universe of the Comedy is outlined. If Inferno is mainly sounds and high and dim voices, in Purgatory we find singing, dominated by the psalmody of Gregorian chant. Casella's Amor che nella mente mi ragiona, on a text by Dante, is reconstructed with the contrafactum. Tant m'abelis vostre cortes deman by Arnaut Daniel is reconstructed on Tant m'abelis l'amoros pensament by Folquet de Marseilla. Finally, in Paradise music becomes polyphonic, is vision and expresses angelic light and movement. In the last part we move to the Scaligera Court where, between Verona and Padua and its University (from to which Marchetto comes), the Codex Rossi 215, with the first monodic ballads and polyphonic madrigals, was written. The court of Cangrande, who hosted Dante during his exile and to whom Dante in 1316 dedicated the cantica of Paradise, was a place where all "good costumanze" were to be found: "qui son le tempeste d'amore e d'amare...chitarre e liuti viole e flauti, voci alt' ed acuti qui s'odon cantare...qui boni cantori con intonatori e qui trovatori udrai concordare."

Patrizia Bovi and Goffredo Degli Esposti