O Oriens
the sacred music by Matteo da Perugia and the motets from the Cyprus Code (15th century)
La fonte musica
Michele Pasotti conduction and lute
Francesca Cassinari soprano
Alena Dantcheva soprano
Gianluca Ferrarini tenor
Massimo Altieri tenor
Efix Puleo vielle (arm)
Teodoro Baù vielle (leg)
Nathaniel Wood trombone
Ermes Giussani trombone
O Oriens is one of the Advent antiphons, also called “O antiphons” because their titles begin with the vocative particle “O”. Many of them, intoned polyphonically as motets, originated in the Eastern Mediterranean and reached us through the XV-century Cyprus manuscript, now preserved in Turin. The codex includes anonymous music in the tradition of Ars Nova, since, before the Venetian conquest in 1489, Cyprus was ruled by the French Lusignan family. The concert comes in the form of an imaginary dialogue between the anonymous Cypriot composers and Matteo Da Perugia, the first magister cappellae of the Milan Cathedral, whose work is also found in a unique source, the Modena manuscript, probably assembled in the early XV century, at the same time when oriental scribes were writing down the motets of the French-Cypriot court.
