Johannes Ciconia’s rise to international fame began around 1390 with a one-way ticket from Liège to Rome. With one foot in ars nova and the other in the Italian trecento, he invented a new style in which Gothic polyphony and Petrarchan poetry blended into an exciting sound. The boy from Liège who rewrote the musical language of his time was not an isolated genius, but the forerunner of five generations of brilliant Franco-Flemish polyphonists. At the forefront of this expedition to 14th century Europe is Mala Punica, the ensemble that Pedro Memelsdorff founded in 1987 and propelled to a position among the world’s best. In this programme, they go to the very heart of Laus Polyphoniae by showing how a powerful imagination from the Low Countries shaped European music at a turning point in history.
