Voi Ch'amate Lo Criatore: A Song History

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"Voi ch'amate lo criatore" is an Italian lauda, a devotional song in the vernacular, preserved in the fourteenth-century Florentine laudario now known as Magliabechiano II, I, 122 (Banco Rari 18).[1] The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence holds this parchment book of monophonic laude, which RISM places in the first half of the 1300s.[2] In Henry John Grossi's 1979 study and transcription of the manuscript it is lauda number 17, placed among the laude to Jesus Christ and described as a lament of Mary.[1] Grossi links the book to the confraternity of Santa Maria at the church of Santo Spirito, a company of laudesi, or lauda singers, and notes that its melodies are written in unmeasured square notation on a four-line red staff, much like plainchant.[1]

An open medieval choir book with square black notes on red four-line staves and red and blue initials.

Italian (Florence), Gradual, tempera and ink on parchment, with oak and tooled leather binding, ca. 1310–15. A Florentine choir book of about 1310-15, written in square notation on red four-line staves like the laudario that preserves this lauda; the book is not the laudario and has no connection to the song.

Early-music performers have taken the piece up in modern times: the ensemble La Reverdie recorded it for Laudarium: Songs of Popular Devotion from 14th-century Italy, an Arcana set reissued in 2014 from albums first released in 1994 and 1999.[3] It also gave its title to a 2010 CD of medieval laude by the Choir of Communion and Liberation, directed by Pippo Molino, in that movement's Spirto Gentil series.[4] Mountain dulcimer players can find the lauda in Neal Hellman's Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides Of The Atlantic, an 85-page Fingers Of Steel PDF book whose download bundles an MP3 recording of every one of its arrangements.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Voi Ch'amate Lo Criatore"

Sources

  1. Henry John Grossi (Catholic University of America dissertation, 1979): "The Fourteenth Century Florentine Laudario Magliabechiano II, I, 122 (B.R. 18): A Transcription and Study".
  2. DIAMM (Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music): "I-Fn MS II.I.122".
  3. Naxos Music Library catalog record (Aspen Discovery): "Laudarium: Songs of Popular Devotion from 14th-century Italy".
  4. Comunione e Liberazione: "Voi ch'amate lo Criatore. Mediaeval Lauds".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Neal Hellman, Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides Of The Atlantic".
  6. Image: Italian (Florence), Gradual, tempera and ink on parchment, with oak and tooled leather binding, ca. 1310–15. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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