Johannes Ciconia and the Rise of European Music

More than 600 years ago, a young musician named Johannes Ciconia left his native Liège to travel south. The first major Franco-Flemish composer to make his fortune in Italy, he helped establish a long tradition of cultural exchange between the northern and southern parts of Europe that lent a new, international dimension to the music of the early 15th century. Michele Pasotti and his ensemble La fonte musica trace this rise of European music through the works of Ciconia and those of his precursors and famed successors such as Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple.