Cantar d'amore Ensemble Oni Wytars

• Traditional
• 1Alla montanara06:26
• Joan Ambrosio Dalza (fl. 1508)
• 2Calata02:10
• Sbruffapappa (16th cent.)
• 3Vurria ca fosse ciaola04:27
• Traditional
• 4Serenata sulla Ceccola03:32
• Giovan Tomaso di Maio (1500-1563)
• 5Maronna nun è cchiù04:12
• Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)
• 6Antidotum Tarantulae03:44
• Traditional
• 7Pizzica di San Vito04:30
• Giacomo Gorzanis (ca. 1520-1579)
• 8Questi cappelli d'or02:56
• Traditional
• 9Cinquecento catenelle03:28
• Barbara Strozzi (1619-1664)
• 10Che si può fare05:21
• Alonso Mudarra (1508-1580)
• 11Romanesca01:48
• Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro (1436-1508)
• 12Vulumbrella05:26
• Traditional
• 13Alla femminisca01:36
• Bartolomeo Tromboncino (ca. 1470-1535)
• 14Tu dormi03:49
• Traditional
• 15La rondinella05:16
• Traditional
• 16Ninna nanna palermitana02:00
• Total Runtime01:00:41

Info for Cantar d'amore

Ever since people have been falling in love, songs or poetry have been written and addressed to the heart of the beloved. It’s been like this for millennia and hopefully will never change. In the past, the authors of these love songs and poems have been kings, male and female troubadours, vagrant minstrels, maestri di cappella, impoverished poets and countless others of whom unfortunately all traces have been lost. They have all have left us with an inexhaustible wealth of poetry and music, whose earliest traces go back to the Middle Ages.

In Italy, at the beginning of the 16th century musicians started to print and sell music as so-called “flying sheets” (fogli volanti) in the streets and alleys. Soon this generated an unimaginable appetite for music that people could perform themselves at home or in so-called “musical circles”, of which, around the year 1600, there existed over one hundred in Naples alone.

This appetite was appeased by numerous composers such as Bartolomeo Tromboncino, Giovan Thomaso di Maio, Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger, Sbruffapappa, Giovanni Domenico Da Nola and many others, who wrote great quantities of relatively simple and catchy songs that dealt mainly with one topic: love.

Piazza Castello became the musical centre of Naples, along with the Taverna del Cerriglio and the Scoglio di San Leonardo, where musicians and poets gathered to compose new villanelle, which the people would make their own, singing them in the streets and at celebrations. If one of these musicians was especially popular with his audience he would be invited to court to sing his songs which had already become famous in the streets and town squares. As these compositions from the “lower strata of society” were merely passed on orally, it was not uncommon that court musicians would note down the melodies they heard on these occasions to contrast them with the state-of-the-art and elitist “Flemish counterpoint”. From the material collected in this way they then created their own compositions that met the fashions and tastes of their time. This music had an incredible potential, and so it was that the profane “villanella” (little peasant song) with its typical parallel melodic behaviour finally found its way into aristocratic society, and with it instruments from folk music such as the colascione and the chitarra battente. For the first time there emerged songbooks “for everyone”, or at least for those belonging to that class who could afford to while away their time playing the lute. These collections contained, among others, frottole (sillinesses, fibs), canzone, ballate, barzellette (jests), villanelles and madrigals, all of which dwelt on love and the associated pleasures and pains in a most extensive manner.

In 1537, “Joannes de Colonia”, a German printer who lived in Venice, published the first printed collection of villanelle. It contains fifteen so-called “canzone villanesche” (rural songs) by different authors, which enjoyed huge popularity for many years. The art of an interpreter of these songs laid in performing them with such great conviction, ease, virtuosity and at the same time with such touching simplicity that they practically became his own. At a time where polyphony gained more and more importance, this style was regarded as the perfect rebirth of antique classical poetry, where it was more important to interpret the often dramatic content than to lose yourself in artistic elaborations. Admittedly, this kind of singing had already been widespread in the oral tradition of the Mediterranean before the Renaissance, and it still is today. Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) was a German Jesuit and polymath who taught and researched at the Collegium Romanum in Rome. His book Magnes sive de arte magnetica opus tripartitum was the first one to document the phenomenon of “tarantismo”, a ritual where the frantic rhythm of the “tarantella” is supposed to drive the spider’s poison out of its victim’s body – only one of many traditions that have survived into the 20th century, and maybe even until today. It does not take long to discover the traces left by these songs in today’s Central and Southern Italian traditional music: the melismatic singing, the rhythmic and harmonic models, even some musical instruments have practically been in uninterrupted use since the 16th century and are an inherent part of this folk music.

In this new project the ensemble Oni Wytars, together with the Roman singer Gabriella Aiello, are making this timeless poetry their own and interpret it – as usual in their own inimitable style. (Sources: Aurelio Fierro: Le origini di un canto; Mimmo Liguoro: I Posteggiatori napoletani, Roberto De Simone: Disordinata storia della canzone napoletana) Ensemble Oni Wytars, 2015 Translation: Iris Zimmermann

Gabriella Aiello, vocals, catanets
Peter Rabanser, vocals, baroque guitar, chalumeau, bagpipe
Riccardo Delfino, vocals, double harp
Marco Ambrosini, nyckelharpa, jew‘s harp, mandolin
Michael Posch, recorder
Katharina Dustmann, percussion

Ensemble Oni Wytars
Ensemble ONI WYTARS has been founded in 1983 to give a new and impulsive expression to Early Music. The focal point of Oni Wytars´ work has always been to explore and unite the many traditions that have influenced and enriched European medieval musical culture, especially the relationship between art music and popular music in the commuting area of mediterranean culture.

After working for years with the rich repertoire of the Italian "trecento", the pilgrim songs from 13th and 14th century Spanish and Catalan manuscripts, medieval Troubadour and Trouvère melodies, the Ensemble finally took one step further to explore the immense heritage of Renaissance and early Baroque music. To Oni Wytars it seems natural to research within todays Italian, Spanish and French Folk-traditions whose roots we can find undoubtedly in the music of the 15th and 16th century. The result is a mediterranean sound-cosmos made out of rhythms, melodies and improvisations, pre-medieval hymns to the sun and 14th century Tarantellas, monidic medieval songs and abounding poliphonic Villanelle from the Early Baroque, performed on instruments that have outlasted millenia.

The heart of Ensemble Oni Wytars are Marco Ambrosini, Katharina Dustmann, Peter Rabanser, Belinda Sykes, Michael Posch and Riccardo Delfino. Regular guests are: Carlo Rizzo (tamburello, riqq, frame drums), Ian Harrison (cornetto, shawm, bagpipes), Pascale Van Coppenolle (organ), Meike Herzig (recorders), Su Ehlers (soprano), Jule Bauer (voice, nyckelharpa), Ross Daly & Kelly Thoma (Cretan lyra, tarhu), Luigi Lai (launeddas), Jeremy Avis (voice), Uschi Laar (harp), Thomas Wimmer (vielle, viola da gamba, Llaud), Karsten Wolfewicz (narration), Gabriella Aiello (voice), Giovanna Pessi (harp), Claudia Pasetto (viola da gamba), Efrén López (oud, citola), Michael Behringer (organ).

For his concerts and CD projects Ensemble Oni Wytars invites reknown musicians of both Early and Folk music. Collaborating with outstanding masters such as Sardinian "launeddas" player Luigi Lai, the Crete-based duo Ross Daly & Kelly Thoma (Cretan lyra, tarhu), the tamburello virtuoso Carlo Rizzo, Michael Behringer (organ, harpichord) and Ian Harrison (cornetto, shawm, bagpipes) the last two albums "Mediterraneum" (SONY/DHM 2011) und "La Follia - the Triumph of Folly" (SONY/DHM 2013) have been realised.

Ensemble Oni Wytars has perormed (a.o.) at the following venues / concert halls / festivals: Styriarte Festwochen d. Alten Musik, Graz (A), Festwochen d. Alten Musik, Innsbruck (A), Festwoche der Alten Musik, Krieglach (A), KunstHalleKrems (A), Brucknerhaus Linz (A), Hamburger Musikfest (D), Alte Oper Frankfurt/M (D), Int. Festwoche d. Alten Musik Bad Wimpfen (D), Int. Tage der Alten Musik Brandenburg (D), Montalbâne Festival, Freyburg/Unstrut (D), Festival Europäische Kirchenmusik, Schwäbisch Gmünd (D), Festival de musique ancienne de Sillery/ (CAN), Rencontre int. des Luthiers et Maîtres Sonneurs / St.-Chartier (F), Castel dei mondi, Andria, (I), Teatro Chiabrera, Savona (I), Teatro Carlo Felice, Genova (I), Festival Alia musica, Fidenza (I), Terra dels trobadors, Castelló d`Empuries (E), Vredenburg Utrecht (NL), Galway Early Music Festival (IRL), Kyburgiade Winterthur (CH), Festival Lenzburgiade (CH), Voix et route romane (F), Espazos sonoros, Santiago de Compostela (E), Ductac Theatre, Dubai (UAE), Fíra de la Mediterrania, Manresa (E), Tage Alter Musik Herne (D), MusikTriennale Köln (D), Philharmonie Köln (D), Wittenberger Renaissance Musikfestival (D).

In summer 2007 the german "WDR" - television has followed us for about a month in several concerts and has produced a one - hour feature called: "Oni Wytars - musikalische Wanderer zwischen Orient und Okzident", that has been broadcasted all over German TV-channels.

Booklet for Cantar d'amore