Six centuries

I'll go to bed very soon, but not before posting about my day of music which spanned no less than 6 centuries today. It started off with the already mentioned performance of Elektro-Punk (I think) Tomi Z. at 1am in the morning: Very loud, silly, in your face, obnoxious, lewd, direct, messy. Very much alive.
It ended sedately, i.e. in line with my current state of exhaustion, with a concert of italian madrigals from the sixteenth century. Cipriano de Rore composed those madrigals mostly on classical texts by Francesco Petrarca, whose 700th anniversary is being celebrated with a special exhibition in Basle where he lived for a bit before the big earthquake (a recurring theme...) struck in 1356. Incidentally, Petrarca was rediscovered as a founding father of humanism not least by Basle book printers in the early 16th century, hence there are lots of fine incunabula on display in that exhibition.

But I digress. I wanted to tell you about the concert: It was very low, beautiful, intricate, dialectic, refined, precious. But very dead.

Anchor che col partire
io mi senta morire,
partir vorrei ogn'hor, ogni momento,
tant'è il piacer ch'io sento
della vita ch'acquisto nel ritorno.
E così mille volt'il giorno
Partir vorrei,
tanto son dolci gli ritorni miei.
Alfonso D'Avalos