This kind of definition was the result of one of your questions: if I had to define myself in some way… It occured to me as I recalled my studies and my primary motivation in regard to music. I believe the search for a repertory takes in all these factors. The process of having learnt to play many instruments, and gradually focusing on one, is much more fortuitous than that of selecting a repertory. I arrived in Rome at the age 17 or 18, with a vague idea about Baroque, Romantic and avant-garde music, a bit of everything, but very little Medieval music until I came across a manuscript which left an indelible mark on me. As a result of this experience, I went in search of someone who could teach me how to interpret this manuscript: Rossi Vaticano. So I went to Basel and stayed for a while, although I knew there was no way of studying fifteenth-century music there, and I began a kind of musical journey which I referred to as a kind of irrecoverable “Itaca” earlier this morning, commencing with Vivaldi and Bach, and which included everything from Amsterdam, Berio and contemporary music, to the Renaissance and Jordi Savall. Everything I went through has left me with sweet memories and many experiences. When I returned to Italy, after my stay in Amsterdam, I was convinced that this search was something personal and that I had to directly confront my ignorance. Everything which has already been done can be used in some way, but it has to be re-read over and over again, one has to directly consult the sources, with the most original approach possible. That was the beginning of a very lengthy process which is still going on.

But the possibility of consulting these sources is not within everybody’s reach.

Mine wasn’t a very methodical approach to the sources, more like a spiral, gradually bringing me closer to the centre. I think it is impossible to work methodically because a researcher always comes across something he/she is not researching at the time. You have to be disposed to changing direction every step of the way and taking advantage of what falls into your hands while you are looking for something else. While researching iconography, I discovered music history, while researching music history, I encountered problems relating to prosody and transcription. Perhaps this method only serves to give you the courage to begin, and later you have to change course.

Did you have to extend the bounds of your repertory both backwards and forwards in time or did you center on its ramifications?

What fascinates me most about fourteenth-century music is what was new about it at the time, as well as what is still new about it today. More than new music, it is irreplaceable. It is a language which has no substitute, nor can its contents be translated into another language. The way the music is composed, the way the music is associated with the text, its theatricality and emotion, the way of conducting a dialogue through music to an emotional and an almost academic level among composers: all this is typical of this period in history. A repertory which I initially thought was going to turn into a speciality became an entire universe. One has to compare it to someone studying the twentieth century. Six centuries later someone who wants to devote themselves to studying the twentieth century will be termed a specialist. But at present, who is a specialist in the twentieth century? It’s like being a specialist in the entire universe. As they say in Italy, a tuttologo. I don’t consider what I do as a special field of study, it is a language, an art within art itself. But that wasn’t your question… You asked if I needed to extend my repertory backwards or forwards…

Did you consider it necessary to revise the thirteenth century, for example?

Well, yes, everything helps, but in the end I have found that all this seems so modern that there is as much need to know about the thirteenth century as there is the innermost corners of one’s soul. Any stylistic interpretation requires at least the illusion of distancing oneself to a certain degree so as to consider other poetic sources. It is an illusion, but it is necessary.

Each composer is his own representative and this could also be said of each of his works.