Firenze circa 1350: Music from the age of the birth of humanism

Winners of the Cambridge Early Music prize at the 2015 York Early Music Festival competition for young artists, their first concert explores the music of mid 14th century Florence, with its exceptional virtuosity, haunting melodies, and writing both elegant and fiery.

Between 1350 and 1400, the city of Florence was the epicentre of a cultural blossoming which has influenced Italian culture to this day: architecture and arts were undergoing an aesthetical changeover, the Tuscan dialect was elevated to a language of literature by the poets Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and the population of Florence became exceptionally cultivated and well-educated. More than two thirds of the male population were able to read, and a new elite was born out of the blend of merchants with international trade relations and the culturally curious middle class. The production of manuscripts, notably musical ones, increased suddenly, creating not only professionally crafted luxurious, highly ornate exemplars, but also so-called zibaldoni — personal notebooks, through which we can gain an intimate impression of the intellectual life in Florence at that time.