Petrarch's letters are both typical and exceptional. They are typical as records of life in the gloomy latter end of the Middle Ages in Europe, especially in Italy and southern France. They are packed with information about the literary, eccesiastical, and courtly worlds, about food, clothing, travel, medicine, agriculture, and the routine of ordinary existence. They are also typical in their expression of the ideas and responses which all men of...

A collection of two works by the composer Gavin Bryars: The fifth century, a large-scale work for choir and saxophone quartet that uses text from Centuries of meditations, by the English poet and theologian Thomas Traherne; and, Two love songs, settings of Petrarch sonnets for female choir a cappella.