Crisalide

Crisalide, by Federica Bianchi and Peppe Frana, is an amazing journey in the world of the "intavolature" of the XIVth century for clavicimbalum and lute or chitarrino. Music by Johannes Ciconia, Francesco Landini, Jacopo da Bologna, Pierre Des Molins.

“Intavolare” means to adapt a pre-existing polyphonic composition for the performance on

an instrument capable of reproducing the various voices simultaneously and, with the acquisition offrets occurred during the fifteenth century, the lute joined the early “intavolatori” instruments such as the liturgical organ, the portative organ and the archaic cymbalum, as revealed by the expression “in cytaris vel etiam in organis” written in comment on a composition of the Buxheimer codex.

This work explores the interaction between plucked and keyboard instruments in the interpretation of the 14th and 15th century repertoires, presenting examples taken from medieval Italian and Mittle-European keyboard music literature together with original adaptations of vocal and contemporary instrumental repertoire.

Like a chrysalis, this peculiar moment of western music history expresses together the embryonic stage of what the instrumental music of the following centuries will largely become and the fruitfulness and the mystery of those transitional moments of human culture that by escaping from the retrospective periodizations of historiographical studies at the same time facilitate our comprehension of those in a crucial way.