Luogo e data di registrazione		Séon-Studio, München (Germania) - 21-23 & 27-29 dicembre 1970
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Dieter Tomsen
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 102 - (1 lp) - durata 46' 20" - (p) 1972 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63442 2 - (1 cd) - durata 46' 20" - (c) 1991 - ADD
	Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26468 2 - (1 cd) - durata 46' 20" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

JOHANNES CICONIA Johannes Ciconia has long been known to musicologists and connoisseurs of music as the representative of an epoch in musical history, yet his music is almost entirely unknown. Guillaume de Machaut achieved fame chiefly by his “Notre Dame“ Mass, Guillaume Dufay by his Masses and “chansons“, and Binchois by his descriptions in music of the court of Philip the Good; they aroused the interest of the general public as much as that of musicologists, and the gramophone records made of their works were very sucessful. It is to be hoped that this record will restore Ciconia to his rightful place in the development of music towards the end of the Middle Ages. The first thing to be established, however, is his place in his own time, and the school to which he belonged. There is no documentary evidence to show whether he was “Flemish” or “Dutch“. He came from the state or the diocese, perhaps even from the city, of Liège, for it was there, at the Collegiate Church of St John the Evangelist, that he received his earliest musical training. His father, “Jean Ciwagne“, was a furrier; it was due to one of his customers, Nicolas de Bessa of Avignon, that Johannes and his brother, Guillemus del Ciwagne, came to Avignon in 1348. In 1350 we find the two young men in the service of Aliénore de Turenne, whose sister, Cécilie de Comminges, had a close relationship with Pope Clement VI. Aliénore’s influence with the Pope obtained a canonry at St John the Evangelist's at Liège for her intimate friend Johannes, and another at the Church of Saint Denis for Guillaume. At this time three men, who played an important part in the musical life of France, generally lived at Avignon: the theorist Jan de Muris, to whom the Pope had entrusted the task of revising the calendar; Philippe de Vitry, the author of the treatise entitled Ars Nova, at that time in the service of John, a son of the King of France and French Ambassador to the Papal Court; and Guillaume de Machaut, who had been obliged by the death of his master, John of Luxembourg, at the battle of Crécy in 1346, to find either a new patron or a benefice. Guillaume, the younger of the “Ciwagne“ brothers, returned to Liège a few years later, but Johannes stayed to make a career for himself at Avignon. He entered the service of Cardinal d’Albornoz, whom he accompanied to Italy, where he was sent to regain the Papal States for the Pope, with four other men from Liège in his suite. Travelling from Lombardy to Florence, from Milan to Padua, from Orvieto to Viterbo and from Bologna to Cesena, Ciconia became acquainted with the most important Italian cities in which music was being decisively influenced by a new concept of art, very different from that which he had been taught in his youth at Liège and later at Avignon. The death of Cardinal d’Albornoz in 1367 inspired Ciconia to compose the ballad Con lacrime bagnando il viso, which was sung again at Padua on the occasion of the death of Francesco II des Novello de Carrara, who was murdered when Padua was captured by the Venetians in 1405. This song was so moving that more than one organ arrangement of it is to be found in the Buxheim Book of Organ Music of the end of the fifteenth century. When his protector died, Ciconia returned to Liège, but not without first trying to find a new patron in some North italian court, especially at Padua; he had made influential friends there when he was in the senrvice of Cardinal d’Albornoz, who in 1367 had obtained the title of “Vicar General" of the italian Realm for Prince Francesco Carrara as a reward for his support of the Papal policy. It is probable that the madrigal Per quella strada lactea del cielo (Along the milky way in the heavens) was composed to celebrate this occasion, for the words, which are so similar to the Triomphi of Petrarch who was then in the service of the court of Padua (Vedeva un carro andar tutto abrassato -Il saw a flaming chariot pass by), are a direct reference to the Carrara coat of arms, which show a flaming chariot travelling through a starlit sky. Curiously enough, incidentally, a picture of a flaming chariot moving in space is also found in a manuscript of Petrarch’s works that is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. No dout he also stayed for a short time at the court of Galeazzo Visconti at Milan, for the canon Le ray au soleyl (The ray of the sun) is a reference to the arms of Galeazzo and his wife, Isabel of Valois, “the gentle turtle dove", and to the Duke’s motto, “A bon droit“. Isabel died giving birth to a son in 1371, so the composition of the canon, and Ciconia’s stay at Padua, however short it may have been, can be dated slightly earlier. A documentary reference to his presence among the clergy of St. John the Evangelist’s shows that he was back at Liège in 1372, and he remained there, unless he had occasion to travel, until the end of the century. The circumstances of his life there were pleasant; although nominally a cleric, he married the daughter of Jacque d’Heur, a well known citizen of Liège, and he had enough leisure to give profound thought to his art and to the problem of combining the intellectual structure of the French Ars Nova with the sensitivity characteristic of Italian music, particularly of that produced in the North Italian cities of Padua, Milan and Verona. At this time he also evolved his own individual style and described it in a treatise entitled Nova Musica, which he later took with him to Italy. Most of the works that he composed at Liège inthe last quarter of the fourteenth century were lost in the fire that destroyed the city in 1468, in the time of Charles the Bold. Many, however, were saved by being taken to Italy, especially the Masses (that is to say the closely related Et in terra and Patrem in the tradition of Avignon), the similarity of which is obvious owing to the use of a single canto fermo (Regina gloriosa), the overall structure, the liturgical tenor and the technique of the proportions. Yet he must have travelled frequently during this time. His absences from Liège were recorded by the clergy of St .John’s, and sometimes even his emoluments were paid to a colleague. This was especially the case in 1396 and 1398, when the organist Gilla signed receipts for the salary of the absent Ciconia. Where did he goto? To Avignon, whose Pope he, like many Liègeois, recognised as the true Pope? The song Sus une fontaine, en remirant, the musical style of which was described by Philipottus de Caserta as “are subtilior", is as reminiscent of Petrarch’s “fountain” as of the three motives, musical as well as literary (“en remirant“, “en attendant", “de ma dolour“) which show a direct connection with the three songs composed by Philipottus during his stay at the Papal court in 1370. The political situation deteriorated round about 1400 and 1401, when Liège was again attacked by the plague. Ciconia’s name appears for the last time in the archives of St John the Evangelist’s in 1401, the year in which, thanks to the Archpriest Zabarella of Padua, he was made a prebendary of the Cathedral at Padua, which enabled him to live there. This honour was bestowed upon him as a reward for his compositions in honour of the city. Of these, O felix templum was composed for the consecration ceremonies of the restored cathedral, and dedicated to Stefano Carrara in 1400. Yet it is not until 1402 that his name is found in the account books of the cathedral at Padua, which he was never to leave again. He had left his native country, but not without composing a moving song of farewell: Aler mens veux. "I wish to goto a foreign land, because pity is dead; to you, dear lady, for vvhom I yearn day and night..." It was a farewell to his native land at a time when there was no more pity in the world (Prince John of Bavaria was surnamed “the Pitiless“), and to the wife he loved whom he was never to see alive again... He later used this song, written in French ballade from, as the setting of a Latin poem, O beatum incendium. It is a song in praise of Christ in the form of a Litany: “Oh fire of ecstasy, burning desire, sweet fount of refreshment“; it is the Son of God whose praises Ciconia is singing in his poem, which is as full of yearning as his farewell to his native land; the new world in which he had decided to live was the Church. From then on he stayed at Padua Cathedral, not only as a priest but as musical director. There he finished writing his treatise, Nova Musica, one chapter of which he expanded in more learned form, no doubt for the use of his pupils the young singers of Padua; he issued it as a separate work entitled De Proportionibus, and dedicated it to his dear “brother” Johannes Gasparo, the choir master of Vicenza Cathedral. He acted as an examiner when the candidates for the Doctorate of the University of Padua defended their theses, and was present at the examination of a well known theorist, Prosdocimo de Beldemandi. He wrote motets and Masses for Padua Cathedral; he produced one more composition in honour of his protector, Zabarella, who in the meantime had been raised to the purple; he wrote Masses, but he did not forget the world and offered musical homage to two famous cities: Lucca, in honour of which he wrote Una panthera in compania di Marte (the panther and Mars are the coat of arms of the city of Lucca), and for Venice, “splendeur du monde“, a song with which to welcome Petro Marcello, the Bishop of Padua, in 1409. It is difficult to say with certainty when he wrote his famous italian Ballads. Some, indeed, can be dated by their italian ars nova style, and so were presumably composed some time before the last phase of his life; others, on the other hand, show a more recherché style, are as French as they are Italian in structure, and still have some traces of the “ars subtilior“. Possibly written during his last years, they include Lizadra donna, Chi nel servir antico, and the most famous of all, O rosa bella, which was later appropriated by Dunstable. This ballad is still also to be found in the books of organ music of the end of the fifteenth century. Johannes Ciconia’s name appears for the last time in the account books of Padua Cathedral on the 15th of December 1411. He must therefore have died between the 15th and 25th of December, which, at that time, was the first day of the new year - 1412. Still known and admired at the time of the Council of Constance in 1417, he was forgotten by musicians, and it was not until the twentieth century that his songs were heard again. Suzanne Clerxc (Translation: Geoffrey Waltkins)
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"