Cambridge Festival of the Voice: The Blind Fiddlers

It is said that on a warm morning of the year 1389, in the Florentine garden known as ‘Il Paradiso’, Francesco degli Organi, famed for his virtuosity, accepted a bet to silence the birds by the beauty of his organ playing. This blind composer and multi-instrumentalist was known in the city not only for his musical prowess, but also for his rhetorical abilities and philosophical views. A perfect rep-resentative of incipient humanism, Francesco, together with fellow composers such as Lorenzo da Firenze, Andrea Stefani and Giovanni da Firenze, was to bring the music of their time to its apogee.

 

The Sollazzo Ensemble's second concert in the Cambridge Festival of the Voice features the music of the two blind fiddle players, Jehan Ferrandes and Jehan de Cordoval, whose amazing playing influenced Dufay and Binchois.