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| | MALA PUNICA, PEDRO MEMELSDORFF, DIR.: Narcisso speculando (Harmonia Mundi) |
 | | Don Paolo di Marco (1355-1436), Benedictine abbot and tenorista, was among the second generation of Trecento composers who wrote primarily secular works, establishing three new musical/poetic forms of secular polyphony: the madrigal, the caccia, and the ballata. |
 | | Mala Punica, founded in 1987, by its director and flutist Pedro Memelsdorff, has established itself, through a series of recordings on Arcana and Erato, as the foremost proponent of the music of the Trecento, and of the subsequent period, the Ars Subtilior. |
 | | Typically, Paolo's madrigals consist of two or three three-line poetic stanzas, terzetti, each sung to the same music, followed by a two-line ritornello, sung to different music in another meter. |
| www.thenightowl.com /reviews/malapunica.htm (601 words) |
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