Laude, Ballate, Saltarelli e Villanelle – Written and oral tradition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance

The Aquila Altera ensemble keeps in mind the acquisitions of the most reliable musicological studies that claim that the gap between us and early music is so unbridgeable as to make it impossible to take into consideration any musical performance removing it from its own historical context and time; but this does not prevent the ensemble from developing a particular musical approach whereby music from the learned, therefore written, tradition, is compared with music that owes its existence to oral transmission. This research sets the two repertoires side by side, endeavouring to detect a possible relationship between them, not only in their musical aspects, but also in their texts. The repertoire that is presented here, which is entirely Italian, juxtaposes pieces drawn from manuscripts or printed collections from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries with pieces (and performance practices) that stem from an oral tradition and from the use of musical instruments of the Italian tradition, in addition to the more common ones. These instruments have been reconstructed on the basis of the historical sources, and one of the most widespread and musically important is the bagpipe.