Luogo e data di registrazione		Bürgerbräu, Münich (Germania) - gennaio 1972
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Wolfgang Gülich
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 113 - (1 lp) - durata 48' 25" - (p) 1973 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26481 2 - (1 cd) - durata 48' 25" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

FRANCESCO LANDINI When we think of Italy, we think of sun shining on green hills with stone villas and gardens and wine terraces, of gentle landscapes and happy villages. One enjoys Italy immensely with the eyes, while with the mind one contemplates an endless history of Rome and the fascinating and adventurous history of Venice or Florence. Florence, Firenze, the City of Flowers, the chroniclers tell us, the city of Giotto, of Dante, of Lorenzo de Medici. Following the invasion of Florence by the English poets, the smaller towns around Florence have become well known all over the world: Siena, Lucca, Pisa and, overlooking Florence on the hill, Fiesole, where ca. 1325 Francesco Landini was born. Who was this man? Villani, the chronicler of Florence, wrote about his life, and he is mentioned here and there in the belles lettres of his contemporaries. Giovanni da Prato describes his performances in the gardens of the Villa Alberti, Cino Rinuccini makes a sober statement of his qualities, the Florentine poet Franco Sacchetti communicated with Landini in verse, Simone Prudenzani places several pieces of Landini’s in the Christmas celebration of his master entertainer, Sollazzo. Landini was presented with the laurel by Peter the Great, King of Cyprus, for his poetry. Landini’s Italy was not our Italy. It was a more personal Italy, lacking green hills and sunlight, wine terraces and landscapes. It was private world of sound and abstract ideas, for Landini, il cieco, was blind. Francesco Landini, son of the painter Jacopo (del Casentino?) and contemporary of Petrarch, was blinded in childhood by smallpox. He was a pupil of Jacopo da Bologna and was a skilled performer on many instruments, particularly the organ. Francesco Landini, the blind organist of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence is without doubt the best known name in Italian fourteenth-century music. One hundred and fifty three secular works have survived to demonstrate his prominence in the anthologies of the period, more than three times the number of any other composer in any country save Machaut, who collected his own works. Landini was a master musician (performer), composer and poet, and a dabbler in philosophy and astrology as well. If one were to walk from Fiesole to Florence, the first large church one would encounter is that of San Lorenzo, where Landini was organist. He was not organist at the giant Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiori with the so-called Giotto Campanile, for although construction was under way, it was neverfinished in his lifetime. Nor for that matter was the work of Brunelleschi, nor that of Michelangelo on his own San Lorenzo to be seen during his lifetime. Landini’s San Lorenzo was the 4th-century church consecrated by St. Ambrose, restored in the 12th century and then, under the influence of the Medici family, and just shortly after Landini’s tenure, rebuilt, mostly by Brunelleschi. We have very little idea of what our blind organist played in his San Lorenzo, for only a fragment of one scared piece has come down to us, which is a motet. Landini must have known Giotto, the peasant son painter who was so well adjusted to his age that he never participated in nor suffered, as did his friend and benefactor Dante, from the complicated politics of Florence. Landini was serious in spirit, and his was the intellectual world, in which he participated as a younger contemporary of Petrarch and Boccaccio - there we have an unequalled Trio: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and to them we add the less-known Sacchetti and indeed many others of literary quality and fame. But Landini was not the type for the lighthearted. Novella of Boccaccio or Sacchetti. Landini was earnest. Dance music does not figure in his secular composition, nor was popular music a part of his world, and he held it in derision. He wrote:     Musica son’ che mi dolgo piangendo     Veder gli effecti mie dolcie profecti     Lasciar perfrottol’ i vagh' intellecti.     (I am Musica, and it pains me to tears     to see the effects of my own sweet prophets     ignored by the best minds for pop-tunes.) None of Landini’s texts are easily witty, nor light of heart, bawdy or otherwise directly entertaining. The texts of his ballate are mostly his own (unlike many of his colleagues’) and are set (with one exception) to very serious music. Well now, how do we account for the fact that people collected over 150 serious songs of this man, songs which are both difficult to perform and highly demanding on the listeners? It was not out of reverence for his name, it was because of certain qualities in his texts and music, qualities which we must discover both as performers and as listeners to his music. Here we see a sign of changing taste. We are reminded of the troubadour Arnault Daniel of whom Petrarch wrote: “gran maestro d’amor, ch’alla sua terra amor fa onor, col suo dir strano e bello" and who Dante praised as “miglior fabbro del parlar materno", whose rhymes were more original than any other, whose songs, according to the razo, were neither easy to understand nor easy to learn. "Who", asked Bornart Amoros, "will be so subtle as to understand everything, especially in the songs of Giraut de Bornelh?" So it is with Landini, whose music is difficult to understand and difficult to learn, however potent. The Trecento Italian found in his music a synthesis of the art world rapidly changing, a concentrate of the essence of the cultural life-style at the moment it passed over the brink. As a serious artist, Landini reflected two generations of music; it is as if he were a late-comer to the next scene. It would be unfair and frivolous to discuss Landini’s music in terms of his cadences or treatment of dissonance. This would be to discuss the paintbrush of the painter. The artistry of his music is to be found beyond the techniques he employed. Landini’s was a world of sounds and ideas, and his music is of immense depth, never frivolous, seldom even really light-hearted, actually rejecting all simple and clear emotions, yet suggestive, warm and personal. He must have been a fascinating man to know. To paraphrase his tombstone, his ashes lie in San Lorenzo, his soul above the stars, but his music remains with us. Thomas Binkley
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"