La Quintina

Plange Regni Respublica

Political musics from the 13th to the 15th century

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Medieval musical literature is full of references to power, especially in the field of polyphonic creation, and can sometimes take the form of a political commitment where exhortation, regret, celebration, criticism occupy a prominent place. We think of the motet 22 by Guillaume de Machaut whose dramatic text illustrates a dark period of the XIVth century: «Weep, kingdom, your people are ravaged by dissension».

The proteiform genre of the motet is a means of expression preferred by composers between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries to comment on current events in a backhanded, hidden and metaphorical or more explicit way. From Adam de la Halle to Guillaume Dufay, the noble rhetorics develop treasures of inventiveness and become, through their texts set to music, real intermediaries of political ideas sometimes praising the ruling classes, sometimes pamphleteering. With this unique musical program, we wish to unveil the history of a genre, the motet, whose polyphonic artifices bring great history into soft harmonies.