Landini: L'Occhio del Cor

Francesco Landini was the most famous Florentine Trecento composer, known for being a multi-instrumentalist, notably a virtuoso on the organ. As known, he lost his sight at the age of 7 but, despite his disability, he excelled in the study of music and all liberal arts. Might the condition of blindness have affected the poetic production of Landini? La Reverdie together with Christophe Deslignes, investigate this hypothesis, with a new project that presents both well-known masterpieces and pieces never recorded before, searching for signs that might be eventually impressed in the verses and the music of Magister Coecus by the loss of his sight. The reference to the eyes from literary topos becomes in many of Landini's texts a melancholic poetic expedient to express the distance, the absence or the loss of the beloved woman, that only "the heart's eye" (L'Occhio del Cor) is able to imagine. A project which fills the recent recording void on a fundamental author at the sunset of the Middle Ages, re-read through a perspective never explored until now. A passionate work on the strict bond between poetry and music, well explained by Davide Daolmi, is associated to a necessary musicological research about sources.