Compiled by our Classical Music desk.
An Early Music concert is almost always a lesson in music history. And that is not a bad thing at all.
The concert audience is usually less familiar with Early Music than with the great masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Often, the Early Music programme takes the form of a theme concert: pieces of music are selected that recount a historical narrative, and the listener can read about that narrative in the programme booklet.
Fortunately, one can also listen to the music without in-depth knowledge. It is not at all necessary to know everything in order to enjoy the sounds that the musicians have to offer in the moment. On this broadcast, we will hear two concerts featuring (mainly) medieval music. Both tell a story, and the stories are quite similar.
In a concert by the German Per-Sonat, we hear Greek, early Christian and medieval music. The theme is Rome, the Eternal City, which was the centre of the western world in both antiquity and the Middle Ages.
In a concert by the Czech Schola Cantorum Pragensis, we start in the early Middle Ages. We will hear how, initially, there were several different singing styles, which around the year 800 AD were combined into one repertoire: the Gregorian chant. As the Middle Ages progressed, people started developing their own styles locally. This also happened in Prague, where this particular Schola originated. We can hear it all today.
Both concerts took place during the Utrecht Early Music Festival; the first in 2010, the second in 2011. This year, medieval music will be heard in Utrecht once again.
Playlist:
1. Mesomedes – Aeide Mousa moi philai (hymn to Calliope)
2. Chionoblefaru pater asu (hym to Helios)
3. Hymn to Aphrodite (text Homer)
4. instrumental music (Greek)
5. Seikilosleid (Hoson zèis phainou)
6. Veni redemptor gentium
7. Consurge, consurge induere fortitudine (two-part in organum style)
8. Kyrie (instrumental)
9. Gaudeamus omnes in Domino
10. Kyrie eleison
11. Ad laudem summe
12. Alleluia, assumpta est
13. Clausulae
14. Pucelete / Je languis / Domino (motet)
15. Sol ecce surgit igneus
16. encore (Per-Sonat)
17. Hospodine, pomiluj ny (Eastern European chant)
18. Alleluia, alleluia (antiphon and psalm 112, ancient roman)
19. Vidi aquam (antiphon, ancient roman)
20. In exitu Israel, alleluia (ancient roman)
21. Gloria (ambrosian)
22. Fratres, ecce mysterium (reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, ambrosian)
23. Lucerna pedibus (responsory, ambrosian)
24. Pater noster (ancient Spanish)
25. Ceperunt omnes turbae (antiphon, Gallic)
26. Pascha nostrum, alleluia (gregorian)
27. Speret Israel (Psalm 130, gregorian)
28. Kyrie Rex Virginum (gregorian)
29. Unam petii (gradual, gregorian)
30. Ave Maria stella (hymn, gregorian)
31. Montes Gelboe (antiphon, gregorian)
32. Credo (Bohemian)
33. O presul Christi (Bohemian)
34. Factum est cum baptizaretur (Reading from the Gospel of Luke, Bohemian)
35. Surrexit Christus hodie (song, Bohemain)
36. Ave benedicta’, ‘Maria celi via’ (alleluia en trope, Bohemian)
37. Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz – ‘Presulem ephebeatum’ (rotulum)
38. encore
39. Tournaian mass – Kyrie
40. Tournaian mass – Gloria
