Ensemble Irini

2 versions: chamber or XXL

Chamber version:
8 mixed voices
2 trombones

XXL version:
16 mixed voices
4 trombones

Lila Hajosi, conductor

For this upcoming album, Lila Hajosi has chosen to highlight, through music, the close ties forged between Albania and Italy from the late 15th century to the mid-16th century. This program will be structured around three themes.

The first focuses on the Latin repertoire inspired by the Albanian resistance to the Ottomans, as well as motets of collective penance linked to the Ottoman invasion of the Adriatic (1537–1540) or the later Battle of Lepanto, particularly centering on the historical and symbolic figure of Skanderbeg (Georges Kastrioti, 1405–1468), known as the “New Alexander,” an Albanian lord regarded as a bulwark of Christendom against the Ottomans, who was awarded the title Athleta Christi by Pope Pius II. Although Skanderbeg is not mentioned by name in 16th-century Italian sacred works, his mythical figure can be discerned in motets composed during times of military crisis (collective penance, or “contra turcas”), particularly in Venice, as well as in the repertoire of the Papal Chapel and in Naples. Albania became a symbol of resistance, right up to Vivaldi and his lost opera *Skanderbeg*. The Italian section will therefore focus on 16th-century war and penitential motets.

The second area of focus addresses the issue of the Arberesh, an Albanian community of the Greek Catholic rite that fled the Ottoman invasion and has been settled primarily in Naples since the 15th century; their repertoire has been passed down to us—inevitably altered—through oral tradition and field recordings. Evgenii Skurat and Lila Hajosi propose to conduct a comparative analysis of the 15th-century Orthodox and Greco-Latin repertoires—centered on the era of Constantinople’s influence—and the known Sicilian-Albanian repertoire, in order to produce musical prototypes that offer a musicologically plausible vision of what this imported repertoire might have been.

Finally, the third project concerns the Albanian Orthodox liturgical repertoire. While Ioannes Koukouzélis, born in Durrës in 1280, is widely recognized, the research conducted to date by Evgenii Skurat has not made it possible to definitively identify a repertoire of Albanian origin for the period 1450–1550. In the event that research proves unsuccessful or insufficient, a comparative analysis and experimental musicology approach similar to that envisaged for the Greco-Latin rite repertoire of the Arberesh will be employed. The program resulting from this work may, however, include pieces by Koukouzélis, which, although predating the Ottoman invasion of the Adriatic, were widely circulated during that period.