JANUA
The music of the dialogue between East and West during the last Schism
“Every doorway has two sides (…) So I, the doorkeeper of the heavenly court, Look towards both East and West at once.”
Janus, two-faced God from Ovid’s Fasti
Irini Ensemble
conductor Lila Hajosi
Eulalia Fantova, Clémence Faber mezzos
Julie Azoulay, Lauriane Le Prev contraltos
Benoît-Joseph Meier, Olivier Merlin tenors
Jean-Marc Vié, Sébastien Brohier basses
Catherine Motuz, Sandie Griot medieval trumpets and trombones
music Guillaume Dufay, Janus Plousiadenos, Manuel Doukas Chrysaphes
Janua explores the unique, brief and relatively unknown period of the Council of Florence in 1439. Combining the evocative voices of the French ensemble Irini with an ensemble of medieval instruments, trumpets and trombones, this project sheds light on the momentous historical event when the Council unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate union with the Eastern Churches and save Constantinople, which instead went up in flames in 1453, leaving traces that still resonate today, more than half a millennium later. Janua (Latin for “door”) looks both East and West through the eyes of Dufay, a first-hand witness to these events: few know the motets he composed between Greece and Italy, influenced by the polyphony of contemporary Byzantine composers: on the shores of the Mediterranean, the meeting point of different civilisations that were destined to engage in dialogue.
