Track 6: Andray soulet (Matteo da Perugia)

DULCEDO

Label: OMF (Oasis Music Factory) (KCD-2072), 2019

Medieval Europeans often used various forms of the word ‘sweetness’ (Lat. dulcedo) to describe the beauty of a musical sound. ‘Sweet’ could apply to the sound of the human voice, but also to that of a musical instrument. When the ancestor of the ‘pianoforte’ was invented in the fifteenth century – some 250 years before Cristofori! –, it was baptized ‘sweet melody’ (Lat. dulce melos). Indeed, if there was a sound that medieval people were particularly fond of, it was that of plucked stringed instruments.

This recording explores the combined sound of the harp, the lute and the harpsichord, three of the most popular plucked stringed instruments in late medieval Europe. Corina Marti, Michal Gondko and Marie Nishiyama cast their net wide in the pool of the surviving fourteenth- and fifteenth-century European music, both monophonic and polyphonic.

This recording was made with the Japanese market in mind and is primarily available there.

LA MORRA: Corina Marti (clavicimbalum), Michal Gondko (plectrum lute), Marie Nishiyama (medieval harp)

With an introductory essay by Michal Gondko.