Lìrum Lì Tronc
Goffredo Degli Esposti – sordellina, buttafuoco col siscariello
Mauro Squillante – colascione, mezzo colascione, colascione piccolo
Enea Sorini – voice and percussions
Marcello Vitale – chitarra alla spagnola, chitarra battente
It is a musical group formed and led by Mauro Squillante and Goffredo Degli Esposti to perform music with the main five-seventeenth-century string instruments, typical of the Neapolitan area, the colascione and the Spanish guitar, together with the wind instruments, the sordellina and the buttafuoco.
The group uses, for the first time, two instruments that have disappeared from the European instrumental panorama, lasordellina, a court bagpipe, and the popular buttafuoco (a percussion psaltery played together with a flute), while, as far as colascione is concerned, it is here presented the whole family (the small, the medium and the great), specifying the different musical roles.
With these particular instruments and the practice of the art of variation on stubborn basses, Lirum Li Tronc performs a “cultured” repertoire of Italian dances from the second half of the ‘500, together with the singing of Neapolitan emoresche villanelles.
Their first CD, released in 2009 by Stradivarius, received very positive criticism from the specialist press as the sordellina and the bouncer, together with colascione, the Spanish guitar and, of course, the voice, reproduce an overall sound, likely to the Neapolitan one between the end of the 1500s and the early 1600s and, at the same time, unique in the current concert scene.
Duo Degli Esposti/Ghannudi
Katerina Ghannudi – canto, arpa doppia
Goffredo Degli Esposti – flauto dritto, traversa, flauto & tamburo, buttafuoco col flauto, sordellina
A concert of Renaissance music, in which unusual instruments of this period meet for the first time. Of particular interest and fascinating sounds, there are the double harp, the sordellina, the buttafuoco, as well as various types of flutes, to perform some songs and dances of the Renaissance, both French and Italian, of the kind both cultured and popular.
From the French polyphonies (the chansons) with themes of love, to the most noble dances (pavane and bassedanze), to the most popular ones (the branles), in which the voice and the harp intertwine with various flutes (including the flute with drum), and Italian music, including some Neapolitan villanelle.
La Pifarescha
Stefano Vezzani – bombarde, flauti, flauto e tamburo, cornamusa
Goffredo Degli Esposti – bombarda contralto, flauto dritto, flauto & tamburo, cornamusa, fiffaro
Marco Ferrari– bombarde, flauti, cornamusa
Mauro Morini – trombone,tromba a tirarsi
David Yacus– trombone, trombe a tirarsi
Fabio Tricomi – viella, flauto da tamburo, tamburello, tamburino
The program addresses the representations in music of some of the themes dear to the spirit of the Renaissance. The pieces presented are linked to the theme of the concert in various ways, among which the title (warlike, celebratory or linked to court or popular celebrations) and the musical citation of elements of real military origin, or themes related to the life of the court stand out or of the square.
The representation in music of the clash between the combatants takes place, through more evolved and pseudo-descriptive forms, reproducing the contrast of the military alignments with a similar distribution of the same instrumentalists who, for the occasion, are divided into two groups, to then contend in “musical battle” notoriously less bloody elements such as the presentation of the melody and the attention of the listeners.
As with the theme of war, in the same way the rest of the program unravels touching a vast repertoire in which music constitutes an element that manages to merge in itself and to represent, through the modes already highlighted and others, including the “Inventions” also extemporaneous of a rhythmic and melodic character, the other aspects of the life of the Renaissance taken into consideration, that of the party with its character of carefree and almost apotropaic frenzy, and that of peace, always desired by man, and still today a highly topical subject.