Early music and dance

La Rossignol can count on a huge repertoire and on a solid international experience; for this reason we can propose different kinds of entertainment: concerts, performances, banquets, animations, courses, master classes and historical revocations. The competences ripened in more than 20 years of professional experience in the field of early music and dance, allow us to elaborate programmes and groups chosen according to the occasion, to the aims, to the atmosphere, and to the specific exigencies of customers. We can also elaborate, without any obligation, detailed projects and estimates.
 

Examples

We report, by way of example, some of our programs, reminding that our competence allow us to create, in cooperation with the customer, a lot of alternative solutions.
 

Corti e cortili

Arie e danze per le feste dei poveri e dei re.
La Rossignol (5 executors with song, viellas, early violin, recorders, transversal flute, chalumeau, spinet, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, lute, Renaissance guitar, colascione).
In the Renaissance thought, music, dance and musical instruments are symbols provided with their own values: not simple sounds or objects, but indications of more complex social conventions. They are experiences of human being and of human thought, because singing, dancing and playing are deeds that have to be done with other people. The performance, really pleasant and effective, realized by international specialists in this field, proposes pages taken from the books "… da sonar sopra ogni sorte de stromenti…", or pieces of amusing music meant to be listened and danced both by noblemen and plebeians in an epoch where music is the main character of the cultural evolution.

Ars magica

Music and magic between history and tradition.
La Rossignol (5 executors with song, viellas, early violin, recorders, transversal flute, chalumeau, spinet, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, oud, Renaissance guitar, colascione).
Music and magic have always had a very close connection, certainly beyond the meaning of the word "magic", of the word "magic", which generally relates to anything we can't totally understand. Lutes and ancient guitars, hurdy gurdies and bagpipes, viellas, flutes and drums play "magical" pieces taken from ancient codes or from ethno musicological recordings to seek any ray of light on this mysterious and fascinating world.

Cantabo Domino

Canti sacri tra il XVI ed il XVI secolo.
La Rossignol (5 executors with song, viellas, early violin, recorders, transversal flute, chalumeau, spinet, positive organ, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, lute, Renaissance guitar, colascione).
Christianity, since its own origins, has always used music in order to convey the Word, the message and religious teaching. The early instruments create very suggestive effects and sonorities, taking inspiration from the famous Renaissance idea on the relationship between music and word ("music must be servant of oration") and the programme is based on the late Renaissance music for a significant voyage through the concept of "amor sacro", or songs of prayer and of reflection belonging to the para liturgical repertoire between XV and XVI centuries.

Echo la primavera

Music and dance between Dante and Lorenzo il Magnifico.
La Rossignol (10/12 executors with dance, song, viellas, recorders, transversal flute, chalumeau, shawn, crumhorn, trombone à coulisse, spinet, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, lute, Renaissance guitar, colascione).
"Echo la primavera" is a performance dedicated to XIV and XV centuries Italian music and dance, when, all over Italian courts, poets, painters, sculptors, musicians and dancers give birth to a dynamic and renewed society. The early Renaissance humanistic experience, in fact, produces a refined and elegant art of dancing, which has been codified into books written by Domenico da Piacenza, Antonio Cornazano, Guglielmo Ebreo. The nobility, through the grandiosity of events, celebrates its own triumph towards a new sense of harmony, the perfection of art, music and dance in an epoch where they all contribute to human thought evolution. The performance is the result of an attentive and rigorous work of research and reconstruction of dances, music, instruments and costumes, in order to recreate those feelings and emotions which contributed to the artistic grandeur of that epoch.

Festa di ballare

Music and dance between XV and XVI centuries.
La Rossignol (from 8 to 12 executors with dance, song, viellas, recorders, transversal flute, chalumeau, shawn, crumhorn, trombone à coulisse, spinet, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, lute, Renaissance guitar, colascione).
The natural context of courtly dancing is the feast, or the auto celebration of the sovereigns' power and magnificence, through which the Prince can celebrate nobility's triumph and can impose to everyone's respect; friends and enemies, ambassadors, men of culture and artists, nobles and plebeians. Domenico from Piacenza and his scholar Guglielmo the Jew from Pesaro (who both lived around the first half of XV century), Fabritio Caroso from Sermoneta and Cesare Negri from Milan stand out among the great Masters of XVI century dancing. Their works are milestones in the history of dancing, and greatly contributed to trace the great path of dancing. The show, performed in costumes with more than twenty early instruments, recreates the cultivated and aristocratic atmosphere of a Renaissance courtly feast.

Nuove inventioni di balli

Vaghe e bellissime figure di balli e balletti all'uso d'italia, come quello di Francia e di Spagna.
La Rossignol (from 8 to 12 artists with dance, canto, viellas, recorders, transverse flute, chalumeau, shawn, crumhorn, trombone à coulisse, spinet, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, lute, Renaissance guitar, colascione).
During Renaissance time, the art of dancing is not only an amusement, a courtship technique, but is also a refined and elegant musical and choreutical art, codified into precise written forms, a real ritual of celebration of power where the main characters are the nobles, who become both actors and audience. Among the great Masters, Fabritio Caroso from Sermoneta and Cesare Negri from Milan are the most important: with their own works (real milestones in the history of dance), they have contributed to the great way of the supreme art of dancing. The performance, in costumes, with musical instruments and executive styles of that period, recreates the aristocratic and cultivated atmosphere of a noble feast at the end of XVI century.

La cena del Paradiso
in honore et gloria del divis (simo) signor ducha

Cibi, intermedi, musiche e danze dell'Italia Rinascimentale.
La Rossignol (from 8 to 40 executors with chefs, servant-dancers, actors and jugglers, flag launchers, dance, singer, viellas, recorders, transverse flute, chalumeau, shawn, crumhorn, trombone à coulisse, spinet, hurdy gurdy, bagpipe, lute, Renaissance giutar, colascione).
The banquet is a curios and pleasant reconstruction of the intermezzos described in the famous books "Banchetti et compositioni di vivande et apparecchio generale" written by Christofaro from Messisbugo, "Opera nuova che insegna ad apparecchiare una mensa" by Eustachio Celebrino from Udine. The recipes we propose come from De honesta voluptate et valetudine, (1468), written by Platina and from "Libro de arte coquinaria" by Maestro Martino Da Como, written towards the middle of XV century, in which they summarizes the entire gastronomic tradition of his own time.
The Renaissance banquet is full of sounds, colours, phantasy, splendour: it is used to amaze, to astonish, to let appear everything more extraordinary and splendid. In it, you can appreciate food with the five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and also hearing, because every plate, served with its suitable wine, is presented and accompanied by specific music and dance. The quantity of food is now of little consequence: the quality and the chefs' creativity are much more remarkable and important. Menus and recipes are prepared according to seasons, occasions and stars' positions. Nobles with their retinues take part to Renaissance banquets and for this reason, they represent an interesting and curious section of social life. Through a splendid and magnificent image of his own court, the Prince can impose himself to the admiration and respect of people on whom his fortunes depend: sovereigns, friends and enemies, ambassadors, bankers, men of culture and artists, noblemen, courtesans and plebeians. Exactly as it happened during those feasts, we will realize theatrical intermezzos with music and dance, in order to recreate the joyful, cultivated and aristocratic atmosphere of that nobility. tati, cantati, suonati e ballati, adatti a ricreare il clima festoso, colto ed aristocratico tipico di quella nobiltà.