Featuring the two greatest composers of their century: Guillaume de Machaut of the 14th C. and Guillaume Dufay of the 15th.
	Their most beautiful music both presented in a vocal  and in an instrumental setting, the latter with flourid diminutions from contemporary organ manuscripts.
	Presenting some of the first pieces truly intended for instruments, music for the dance.

Quadrivium brings to modern audiences the rich legacy of two great Guillaumes: Machaut, greatest composer and most illustrious poet of the 14th century, and Du Fay, who led the musical world one hundred years later.
Machaut was a cleric, a servant in the court of King John of Bohemia, and also a romantic. In his seventies, he courted a faraway 18-year-old girl, Peronne, with exquisite songs of love and devotion. Quadrivium presents the full range of these love songs --pieces of two and three voices, and also affecting solo songs, with lute and harp improvising intricate accompaniment just as they did in the 14th-century courts.
Like most medieval composers, Machaut wrote no instrumental music, but medieval players were quick to steal music they liked, so a precious few of Machaut's love songs have also survived in instrumental arrangements. Quadrivium performs them all, on recorder, lute and harp, interweaving them with the vocal works.
Du Fay, too, was a cleric, holding important church posts for most of his lifetime. On the musical evidence he was also a very sociable fellow. Like Machaut, he wrote many love chansons, and also pieces celebrating the New Year and May Day. He wrote many of his song texts himself, and in one of these, He Compaignons, he calls on eight of his friends, by name, to help him rejoice in the new season.
Du Fay and his 15th-century contemporaries heard and embraced the new sweet harmonies coming across from England, so their music is more familiar to the modern ear than that of Machaut with its austere chords and surprising dissonances. As in the first half of the program, Quadrivium presents both chansons and instrumental arrangements, and also some of the first pieces truly intended for instruments, music for the dance.

about the instruments: