Work: Vergene bella

The stage in the versatile Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ was configured as an open stage, audience on three sides, and was minimally set with a small platform and a table with a red cloth and a candlestick. Myriad small electric candles were scattered about the floor, glowing a warm, flickering gold.

The fifteenth-century French composer Guillaume Dufay straddles the musical boundary between the Medieval and the Renaissance. Working in France and Italy, writing secular and sacred music, sometimes to his own verses, he seems to have had a finger in every musical pie, and this evening’s concert by the Orlando Consort illustrated his pivotal role in the evolution of later Renaissance styles.