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Due radici
Catari, Maggio, l'Ammore
Dowland in Italia
Il Labirinto di Isabella
Il Racconto di Mezzanotte
La Clessidra
La Passacaglia della Vita
Le Strade del Cuore
Odi et Amo
Recitare Tasso
Sud
Villanesca
Masterclasses
cd
Due Radici
Catarì, Maggio, l'Ammore
Le Strade del Cuore
Il Racconto di Mezzanotte
Solve et Coagula
Cantate Deo
Storie di Napoli
Fra' Diavolo
Il settecento napoletano
Recitar Cantando
Frottole
La bella noeva
Gallery
foto
video
news
Contact
booking
Home
agenda
about
programmes
Due radici
Catari, Maggio, l'Ammore
Dowland in Italia
Il Labirinto di Isabella
Il Racconto di Mezzanotte
La Clessidra
La Passacaglia della Vita
Le Strade del Cuore
Odi et Amo
Recitare Tasso
Sud
Villanesca
Masterclasses
cd
Due Radici
Catarì, Maggio, l'Ammore
Le Strade del Cuore
Il Racconto di Mezzanotte
Solve et Coagula
Cantate Deo
Storie di Napoli
Fra' Diavolo
Il settecento napoletano
Recitar Cantando
Frottole
La bella noeva
Gallery
foto
video
news
Contact
booking
LE STRADE DEL CUORE
(The Paths of the Heart)
A journey through the heart of the Italian Renaissance,
with frottole, tarantelle and words of love...
A varied and complex program in which the most delicate refinement is accompanied by a compelling and captivating
joie de vivre
.
The humanist culture in vogue at the turn of the fifteenth century spurred Italian composers to develop a simple and expressive musical style that acted as an alternative to the more elaborately contrapuntal
chanson française
, the very popular genre of vocal and instrumental music.
Courts in Lombardy were at the heart of this fertile experimentation. Among the various poetic forms, the
frottola
, structured in eight-syllable verses, met with greatest success.
The name “frottola” is of uncertain origin. It could be a derivation of the word
frotta
, designating a heterogeneous group of persons, animals or objects. It also signifies a set of “poetic compositions”, also called
barzellette
or jokes – dramatic or amusing stories in miniature, full of riddles and proverbs.
Still today one can encounter the musical traditions which arose in the territory of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, including what is now central and southern Italy and Sicily, the natural crossroads where the cultures of the eastern and western Mediterranean meet. At the time of Spanish rule the signs and influences of much older civilizations were still evident.
In addition to conducting our own research in libraries and archives, we have chosen to traverse the roads of Italy, collecting living testimonies and memories of ancient songs from the last depositories of oral tradition. In this way we give voice to the most authentic and secret traditions of Southern Italy: song and music as magic and medicine.
"Le strade del cuore" are travelled by the desire to hear this music take its place alongside people and places dear to us, evoking stories and situations that bring us together so that we may remember and make of these memories a moment of happiness, albeit tinged at times with mystery and melancholy.
Our program ends chronologically on June 13, 1799, the date that marks the fall of the Parthenopean Republic: that revolutionary dream, suffocated in the blood spilled on the streets of Naples by the royalist and pro-Spanish troops, led by Cardinal Ruffo of Calabria.
© Marco Beasley
* Of this program exists a CD with the same title.
Marco Beasley
voice
Stefano Rocco
archlute, baroque guitar
Fabio Accurso
lute