The piece featured here is a caccia, or a hunting song. You’ll find more about the composer, Giovanni da Cascia, on the Agnel bianco page of this website, including a picture of him from the Squarcialupi Codex.
This particular piece comes to us from the Panciatichi Codex, a Florentine manuscript probably copied around the turn of the 15th century. It has the typical caccia structure: two lines in strict canon and a separate untexted line underneath, followed by a ritornello, which is not necessarily canonic. Typically a caccia depicts an excited action scene, with hunting horn calls, voices yelling to each other, and lots of confusion.
In this one, which depicts a bird hunt on the shore of the river Adda, the hunters are employing both hounds and hawks to bag their prey. We hear one hunter telling his dog Varin to go on, while another calls to his, Picciolo, to come back. Things are already hectic enough (how these guys managed to hunt birds, we’ll never know) when suddenly a downpour scatters the hunters, while they call for their hats and coats and try to find shelter. They are not too distracted, however, to notice a pretty shepherdess nearby…
Our version substitutes a recorder for the second voice line, since Esther is the only one of us who can sing. You’ll find us here, on YouTube:
