The Angels are Singing

While late-medieval poets explored a dizzying range of emotions from heavenly ecstasy to the hellish torments of unrequited love, their musician colleagues were happily setting sacred themes to well-known secular tunes. A song describing ‘graceful women and pretty girls’ could be transformed into an image of angelic choirs, or a suave love song turned into a graceful hymn to the Virgin. Performing music from French and Italian manuscripts, Sollazzo paint a picture of this vivacious mingling of the mundane and the spiritual in songs and virtuoso instrumental pieces by Tapissier, Landini, Ciconia and others.