Venetia Mundi Splendor – Music and Politics in Venice between the Middle Ages and Humanism

The Oktoechos ensemble, a sophisticated female vocal ensemble led by the specialist Lanfranco Menga, in this CD presents a program entirely dedicated to the union of music and politics in the Venice of the early fifteenth century, time of its greatest economic growth and territorial expansion. The naval power of the “Serenissima” and the consequent commercial vitality of the Republic inevitably created the preconditions for a parallel artistic growth, witnessed by the contributions of the greatest artists of the time alternating within the Palatine Basilica of St. Mark at the service of the Dogi and the bishops, composing a great deal of celebratory music that exalted their power and that of the city itself: the city “where the merchants were kings, where Saint Mark was, where the Dogi were used to marry the sea with a ring”