Vox Resonat - Joculatores Dei / Minstrels of God - The Lauda in Medieval Italy

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Vox Resonat - Joculatores Dei / Minstrels of God - The Lauda in Medieval Italy

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St. Francis urged his followers to "go through the world preaching and praising God, … first one of them who knew how to preach should preach to the people and that after the sermon they were to sing the praises of God [[i]laudes domini] as minstrels of the Lord [[i]joculatores Dei]". This little Franciscan vignette conveys the new world of religious thought and feeling that would transform western religious practice in the burgeoning cities of medieval Europe: an active ministry that embraced the secular realm of urban laity, a vigorous new preaching style characterized by spontaneity and directness of expression, and an affective devotional environment that melded sermon, prayer, and song. The fate of this Franciscan legacy in the following centuries as it was adapted, extended, refined, reformed, institutionalized, and appropriated by clergy, laity, and other mendicant orders, is traced in the great textual and musical variety of the works included on this disk.

As Francis himself indicates, the songs of his sacred minstrels were not to be plainchant, the very aural embodiment of the cloistered and contemplative life, but something closer to the vernacular spirit of the troubadour songs he so admired. The ensuing repertory of Italian devotional poetry set to music, or laude, is so varied in time, place, and style as to defy simple taxonomy. The works on this disk span a roughly 250-year period from the earliest extant laude with music (the late 13th-century Cortona laudario) to the polyphonic settings of the early sixteenth century, and while the mendicant devotional thread is discernible throughout this period, the constantly shifting poetic and musical styles reveal a great and equally mendicant capability to adapt to local contexts and tastes. Much of this music thus constitutes the best indication we have of what might be called native Italian music during a time when a predominance of oral and improvisatory traditions and stylistic flirtations with northern polyphony, which was imported with increasing enthusiasm during this period, tend to obscure our view of indigenous Italian music.