Mala Punica

The critically-acclaimed ensemble Mala Punica came into the limelight by the mid-Nineties with three illustrious, multi-award winning discs on Arcana, which revolutionized the world of medieval music: Ars subtilis Ytaliaca, D’Amor ragionando and En attendant. We have here what looks to be the last of Mala Punica's series on the Arcana label, and the most sophisticated yet. This is based on a program made up of pieces which quote others, and the resulting web of allusions is quite sophisticated, as is the literary style of the liner notes. Quite a nut to crunch.

The critically-acclaimed ensemble Mala Punica came into the limelight by the mid-Nineties with three illustrious, multi-award winning discs on Arcana, which revolutionized the world of medieval music: Ars subtilis Ytaliaca, D’Amor ragionando and En attendant.

The critically-acclaimed ensemble Mala Punica came into the limelight by the mid-Nineties with three illustrious, multi-award winning discs on Arcana, which revolutionized the world of medieval music: Ars subtilis Ytaliaca, D’Amor ragionando and En attendant. As implied by the title of the album, D’Amor ragionando (Discoursing on Love) is a collection of songs about love from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy and is centered around Francesco Landini, one of the foremost figures in medieval music. Members include Jill Feldman, Kees Boeke and Giuseppe Maletto, some of the most respected names in the early music repertoire.

The Codex Faenza 117 features the richest instrumental variations of medieval plainchant masses and offices that have come down to us, including three pairs of Kyrie-Gloria settings, a ceremonial motet and several sections of a Marian office. Mala Punica’s ground-breaking recording of this repertoire has shown different possible combinations between voices and—mostly keyboard—instruments to be suitable for the repertoire. The program stages five voices and five instrumentalists.

Compositeur de la fin du XIVe siècle (il mourut vers 1418), Matteo de Perugia n'est pas encore suffisamment reconnu. Pourtant, à l'écoute de ce disque, on reste sans voix devant tant d'inventivité, de modernité et d'inspiration. Grâce au travail historique et musicologique de l'ensemble Mala Punica dirigé par Pedro Memelsdorff, on retrouve tout l'univers de ce compositeur charnière. Sérénité des climats, modernité des rythmes, toute la musique de Perugia est un perpétuel renouvellement.

Most of Ciconia’s eight surviving motets are dedicated to prominent Paduan and Venetian dignitaries of the time, including three bishops of Padua, a Venetian doge, and cardinal Francesco Zabarella, Ciconia’s main Paduan patron. They constitute a highly solemn repertory in which virtuoso singing hides and at the same time reveals complex and fascinating musical structures. Sidus preclarum presents Ciconia's motets in a blend of four to six singers and four to five instrumentalists.

If you love medieval vocal music, you'll be fascinated by this unusual collection of mass movements written by two Italian composers– Matteo and Zaccara–that are juxtaposed and organized both to contrast their styles and to make programmatic sense. There's lots of fancy ornamentation and there are many dramatic moments, as well as sections of sweet, gentle lyricism–listen to Matteo's "Gloria," sung with heart- rending tenderness by soprano Jill Feldman. The singers are alternately accompanied by recorder, harp, fiddle, bells, and organ.

We still have a great deal of evidence today about the ecclesiastical and diplomatic career of Don Paolo di Marco, abbot and tenorista at Florence in the early fifteenth century. But we also owe him a number of allegorical madrigals which are perhaps the most innovative, and certainly the most virtuosic of this period. Apparently innocent bucolic or mythological texts conceal philosophical intrigues, political ideas and moral precepts. Their poetry and music still speak intensely to us in the twenty-first century.

Don’t forget Early Music Day on March 21st! We will celebrate this year with digital premieres of two beautiful albums. Pedro Memelsdorff is a renowned musicologist who founded the ensemble Mala Punica. With them he intensively explored the music of the Italian Trecento during his partnership with Erato, leading to three albums we’ve gathered under the title Gothic Italy. These recordings include the complete motets of Ciconia, a Flemish composer who settled in Padua and was one of the most important figures of the ars subtilior. Then, the complete songs - mostly in French - by the very innovative Matteo da Perugia, one of the first ever composers to put instrumental recommendations in his scores. These are coupled with a Missa cantilena, a parody mass made up by Memelsdorff after sacred or adapted profane pieces from various Italian 15th-century codices, which is an absolute splendor!

Matteo da Perugia (fl. 1400–1416) was a Medieval Italian composer, presumably from Perugia. From 1402 to 1407 he was the first magister cappellae of the Milan Cathedral his duties included being cantor and teaching three boys selected by the Cathedral deputies. Mala Punica is an early music ensemble led by Pedro Memelsdorff.