A large corpus of Paolo da Firenze’s music has survived for us through a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Except for a Benedicamus and a Gaudeamus, all of his surviving works are polyphonic secular songs - madrigals and ballate - a corpus of around 60 pieces. Paolo is therefore among the Italian trecento composers who have left the largest surviving body of work - only Landini has left us more.

But apart from the quantity, it is above all the exquisite quality of his music that we appreciate today. Paolo’s musical language is in tension between two poles: the eccentrically abstract and hypersensitive mannerism of late Gothic art, against the simple beauty and straightforward nature of the upcoming humanism of the Renaissance. For us as contemporary performers Paolo’s lyricism plays subtly with the balance between impression and expression, between serving and being served by the music.