Ensemble: Musica Antiqua Latina

Title of the Concert: Combattimento 400 - Claudio Monteverdi 

meets Abd al-Qādir Marāghī 

Date and time:  Sunday 12th January 2025 at 6.30pm

Programme

Acemler (ca. XV/XVI sec.)

Rast Nakis Beste “Hem Kamer hem Zühre vu Hem”

‘Abd al-Qādir Marāghī (1360-1435)

Rast Nakış Beste “Amed Nesim-i Subh Dem”

Sultan Bahā al-Dīn Muhammad-i Walad (Sultan Veled, 1226-1312)

Acem Peşrevi

Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār of Nishapur (1145-1221)

Shaikh San'an and the Christian Maiden

(adaptation of the novella of the same name from the Mantiq al-Tayr ‘The Word of the Birds’)

Ali Hoca (second half of the XVII century)

Uzzal Peşrev (from Demetrius Cantemir, Kitābu ʿIlmi l-Mūsiki ʿala Vech' al-Ḥurufāt, “Book on the Science of Music according to Alphabetical Notation”, 1700-1703)

Anonymous

 “Küffar Sanır Hüccet Almış Eğri’ye”

Anonymous  (XII century)

‘Chevalier mult estes guariz’ (song of the Crusades)

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (Venice 1624)

from Canto XII of La Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso

Buhurizade Mustafa Itrī Dede (1640-1712)

Buselik Beste “Her gördüğü periye gönül müptela olur”

Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605)

“Clorinda hai vinto”, from Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro primo

Mutlu Turun (1942 -)

Şehnāz Son Yürük Semai

Performers

Musical Director: Giordano Antonelli 

Soloists

Tenor (Testo): Safa Korkmaz (Turkey)

Tenor (Tancredi): Enea Sorini (Italy)

Soprano (Clorinda): Hersjana Matmuja (Albania)

Actor (Sheikh San’Aan): Francesco Sala (Italy)

Viola da Brazzo: Claudio Merico, Gabriele Politi, Gianfranco Russo

Viola da Brazzo basso & Greek Lyra: Giordano Antonelli

Renaissance Violone: Giovanni Giugliano

Tanbur & Lavta: Peppe Frana

Ney Flute: Giovanni De Zorzi

Qanun & Lute: Stefano Albarello

Oriental Percussions: Lorenzo D'Erasmo

Ney Flute & Zurna: Valentina Bellanova

Programme Notes

The COMBATTIMENTO 400 project reframes the play of Clorinda and Tancredi, and its symbols versus the cancel culture, exploring the sophisticated Oriental identity of the Muslim heroine Clorinda.

Claudio Monteverdi's Combattimento of Tancredi and Clorinda opens up to the fascination of the East and its music, a theatrical journey into the Crusades’ cultural worlds, with poems and music of Persian and Turkish ancient tradition.

The ancient Sufi Music of which Abd al-Qādir Marāghī is one of the greatest representatives (referring to Jerusalem under the Turkish Seljuk Empire), completes the historical fresco of Monteverdi's COMBATTIMENTO, extending the representative realism required by Monteverdi to a larger painting. 

In Monteverdi's masterpiece the tragedy of useless but inevitable pain, of blind action, of paradoxical death, of the impossible love is the crucial theme. The topos of the Love & Death antinomy turns into a song that great poets and musicians of every time and civilization have raised against human barbarism.

It turns out that the 'sliding door' of the Mediterranean flows into shared codes, spiritual traditions and universal poems.

A dialogue on the edge of modality takes place between oriental Makam and Renaissance Modes:  Jalal din Rumī and Torquato Tasso, Monteverdi and Marāghī: a dialogue that knows no diversity, but only variety.

COMBATTIMENTO 400, is a kaleidoscope of sounds, colours, timbres, emotions.

Biographies

Musica Antiqua Latina: Ensemble 

Musica Antiqua Latina, a baroque ensemble on original instruments, was created in 2000 by conductor and baroque cellist Giordano Antonelli. The Musica Antiqua Latina project promotes the rediscovery and dissemination of the great Italian baroque repertoire, of which Rome, where the group is resident, was one of the centres of maximum creativity.

From solo programmes such as Jo, Solo, Bach, to the instrumental ensembles of the early 17th century, to the Baroque orchestra with Corelliana geometry, Musica Antiqua Latina has a variety of original and unpublished programmes, from the late 16th century to the pre-classical transition period.

The specialised study of the Baroque repertoire, in particular of Italian and Roman origin, is carried out by the ensemble Musica Antiqua Latina in direct connection with the places and historical iconology that gave life and raison d'être to the same repertoire.

Valuable testimony of the group's musicological and historiographical work is the docu-fiction Christina of Sweden - Musical Treasures, dedicated to the enlightened patronage of the Swedish sovereign, who lived in Rome protecting and supporting artists and men of letters.

Musica Antiqua Latina has been a guest of numerous festivals and associations, including the World Youth Orchestra Chamber Music Festival, Campus Internazionale di Latina, Teatro Le Maschere in Rome, performance of Anfione at San Luigi de' Francesi, Portuguese Cultural Institute of Rome, Festival Musica Storica, Oratorio San Girolamo della Carità - Primavera Musicale Barocca di Roma, Bologna International Process - Sala Nervi Vaticano, Festival Musica Reservata, Radio Vaticana, Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano, Radio 3- I concerti del Quirinale, Musei in Musica - inaudita (2009-2010), Festival Divinamente, Stagione Musicale Etnea, Festival Perla Baroku (Warsaw), Stagione Musicale Etnea, Festival Perla Baroku Warsaw, IIC Istanbul, Roma Festival Barocco, Goldberg Festival Gdansk, Rai Radio 3 Suite, Sudtirol Festival, Rai 5, Early Music Day REMA, Stagione Scarlatti Napoli, Festival Pro Musica e Arte Sacra, Museo Internazionale della Musica Bologna, Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik, Valletta Baroque Festival, Engadin Festival, Festival Cervantino México, Stradivari Festival Cremona, Festival Scarlatti Napoli, Festival Pro Musica, Arte Sacra Roma, Monteverdi Festival Cremona. 

Musica Antiqua Latina records for Sony Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. In April 2021, the disc ‘Vivaldi Concertos’ was released on this label.

Giordano Antonelli - Musical Director, Viola da Brazzo basso & Greek Lyra

Giordano Antonelli, former cellist at Il Giardino Armonico, has regularly appeared in many European festivals, and has been invited to perform as soloist, section leader or basso continuo in the Baroque Orchestra of Seville, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Théâtre Royale La Monnaie-Bruxelles, Baroque Orchestra of Granada, Il Giardino Armonico. The cellist Ludwig Quandt, Konzertmeister of the Berliner Philharmoniker, wrote about him:

" … Giordano Antonelli is one of the rare musicians who are able to create links between active musicians and music scientists, as well as to build up and to lead ensembles which perform ‘directly from the archives’ ".