The construction of La Plata Cathedral, now known as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Sucre in Bolivia, began in 1559. This week on Harmonia, we’ll hear music written for this sparkling venue, with its white marble lit up by the stained glass windows. Plus, our featured release is Tommaso Giordani: Six Duos for Two Cellos.
Tempesta di Mare created a very unusual Christmas concert of Czech music, most of which was found in a bishop’s library in the Moravian Court in Kroměříž. Singers, strings, brass, winds, and organ join together for festive music of the season.
This hour, baroque music composed for the Christmas season, stitched together into a kind of pastiche oratorio quilt... Plus, medieval Christmas music performed by Gothic Voices.
Chiaroscuro is a technique in visual art that tells vivid stories through sharp contrasts of light and dark. This week on Harmonia, we’ll uncover moments of darkness and light with instruments and voice. Our featured release is Soundscape: Leonardo Da Vinci, by Capella de la Torre.
Join us for excerpts from the concert “Hecho en Mexico” by Austin Baroque Orchestra.
Join us for settings of Dido’s lament that predated Purcell’s by nearly 200 years
This week on Harmonia, we sample music of Thanksgiving in early America. From Spanish settlers in Florida to Moravians in North Carolina to the father of American Choral music, join us [on Harmonia] for Songs of Thanks and Praise. Plus, our featured release showcases music brought to the new world by the passengers on the Mayflower.
Travel with us back through time to October 2016. We’re visiting St. Luke in the Fields Church in New York City for “King James and his Bible: a musical portrait,” a concert presented by the viol consort Parthenia with guest bass-baritone Dashon Burton.
One of the things that we like to celebrate occasionally on Harmonia is the vibrant repertoire of new music written for early instruments. This week: music from a beautiful new recording by the Galax Quartet called Dream Drapery, featuring works by Marc Mellits, Robert Morris and Joseph Schwantner.
What do the national drink of Hungary and a composition that is found only in one source have in common? Why, both are called Unicum!
In January, 2020, Alchymy Viols underwent some friendly alchemy to become an ensemble of singers and instrumentalists perfect for the performance of Marc Antoine Charpentier’s 11th and final mass, first performed at the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, probably during the feast of the Assumption in 1699. We’ll hear some of that splendid mass and also Charpentier’s only Sonata among an oeuvre of well over 500 works.
A large collection of music that was thought lost forever after the Second World War re-emerged in Kiev in 1999. Among its more than 5000 pieces of music is a collection of music composed by some of JS Bach’s predecessors that formed part of Bach’s estate. Join us on Harmonia for music of some Bachs you may not know.
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” This week on Harmonia, we’ll catch a fright listening to scary sounds for Halloween…but Halloween was not always reserved for trick-or-treaters.
We'll hear excerpts from the Rose Ensemble's concert at the St. Thomas Aquinas Church in St. Paul in March of 2017. The concert comprised liturgical music composed in the style current in France in the seventeenth century, though not all the repertory is by French composers...
The Book of Psalms figures prominently in the Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic faiths alike. This week on Harmonia, we’ll hear various settings of one psalm—Psalm 2—the one that begins, “Why do the nations rant? Why do the peoples rave uselessly?” Plus, our featured recording is Cantica Obsoleta by the ensemble Acronym.
Busy bees buzz as they journey from flower to flower and back to the hive. But this week on Harmonia, bees aren’t all that’s a buzz—we’ll hear music featuring the crumhorn. Plus, our featured release is Handel Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 performed by Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
Harmonia Uncut brings you two performances from back in the time of concerts, one of Mozart from Gili Loftus, and one of Muffat from Matvey Lapin.
Valentine’s day may be a day of chocolates, flowers, and joy for some. For others, love is fraught with sadness, separation, and death... This week: stories of famous star-crossed lovers.
Quire Cleveland performs music by William Byrd from a 2016 concert, “England’s Phoenix: William Byrd.”
We'll take a journey to sixteenth-century Spain to hear some foot-tapping ensaladas. Get ready to clap your hands and stamp your feet along with this irresistibly energetic music!
Avast, early music fans! It’s pirate week on Harmonia, and we’re plundering centuries of music to bring you tuneful treasures connected to the ocean-going villains of the past. We’ll also sample a featured release from Agave Baroque.
Les Voix Humaines and Nigel North, perform some very beautiful and unusual interpretations of John Dowland's Lacrimae, or Seaven Teares.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” We’ll explore settings of the words of King David – psalms, laments, and music for his instrument—the harp. Our featured release is Sansara: Cloths of Heaven…on Harmonia.
This week on Harmonia, we’ll explore secular song and quirky instrumental music of the fifteenth-century Flemish composer Alexander Agricola. Plus, music from our featured release, “Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 1,” performed by Blue Heron.
Vajra Voices, directed by Karen R. Clark, is a female vocal ensemble that sings medieval to modern music. On February 1, 2020 they gave a concert called “In a Medieval Garden” in Santa Cruz, California. We’re going to listen to them sing music of Guillaume de Machaut accompanied by guest artist and multi-instrumentalist Mary Springfels. Join us!
This hour, we’ll listen to last works-- swan-songs, if you will--from Renaissance and Baroque composers.
Add the Dark Horse Consort and the Chant Schola to the Green Mountain Project (in Italian, “green mountain” easily translates to “monte verdi” - just saying); gather in the Church of St. Jean Baptiste in New York City on January 3, 2019; stir well; and perform the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610. I wonder whether this is the first performance that uses all female cornetto players…
Known as the Jewel of Saxony, Dresden has long been a cultural center of Germany. This week on Harmonia, we’ll explore music performed by the city’s Renaissance wind bands, and two generations of Dresden Kapellmeisters—Hassler, Praetorius, and Schütz. Our featured release is Mare Balticum, volume two: Medieval Finland and Sweden, by Ensemble Peregrina.
The music manuscript known as the Medici Codex was thought to have been created as a present for Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, and his bride . . . but the story is not that simple.
Hell, the underworld, and areas of evil are home to many of music’s darkest scenes. This week on Harmonia, baroque music featuring portrayals of evil spirits, Lucifer, and Hell. Then, darkness turns to light in our featured release, Epiphany: Biber, Buxtehude, Kapsberber, & Bach, by Three Notch’d Road.
In 2018, the viol consort Quaver performed a concert at the Viola da Gamba Society of America's conclave in North Carolina and surprised their listeners with some unexpected approaches to familiar music.
On this edition of Harmonia, we tune up strings of the violin, cello, viola da gamba, and lute, with music in scordatura, or alternate tunings, of strange and familiar instruments.
Music from Infusion Baroque's performance in the 2017 Indianapolis Early Music Festival in a program that featured Italianate composers of the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece Decameron was a fantasy about escape from the Black Death. How did early composers like Arcadelt, Ferrabosco and Sweelinck set his cheerful poetry? Join us this week on Harmonia as we soothe ourselves and our souls with beautiful music.
We avoid the long lines and go directly into Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre in London to hear music from some of its most popular shows. Then, we cross the English channel to France, to hear music from the time of Louis XIV from our featured release The Versailles Revolution.
On this episode of Harmonia Uncut, we visit two lone musicians, one in Ohio and one in Berlin, already alone before the pandemic, recording themselves playing all the parts of their pieces. Tricky stuff!
This hour on Harmonia, we explore music about loss and longing.
We'll hear excerpts from “The People’s Purcell” by Le Nef with Michael Slattery at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival’s opening concert of 2017.
In 1433, around 3:00 PM in Scotland in high summer, the sun vanished. This total solar eclipse came to be known as “The Black Hour.” Join us this week as we listen to eclipse-themed music from across the centuries. Music of darkness- this week on Harmonia.
This week on Harmonia, we travel back in time to the happier days of abundant live music, for performances from Early Music America’s 2019 Emerging Artist Showcase, which took place in May 2019 in Bloomington, Indiana.
On Harmonia this week, we’ll try to provide some solace for the postponement of this year’s Early Music America Young Performers Festival by playing some highlights of 2019’s festival, which took place May 22-24 in Bloomington, Indiana.
Ah, time travel! Today’s podcast revisits Music before 1800 in New York City in January of 1979 to bring you excerpts from a concert of fifteenth century Italian music.
A musical quodlibet can be several things — a parody that contains some kind of crazy list, or a piece with well-known melodies that appear in successive or simultaneous combinations. Join us for German musical quodlibets, this hour on Harmonia.
The Waltham Abbey Singers perform music of Thomas Tallis.
Join us for music by a Czech violinist and composer who was sought after by Haydn and Beethoven, in the same freemasons’ lodge as Mozart, and very much a star of the Vienna musical scene.
The chalumeau was a single-reed ancestor of the clarinet, whose brief popularity left a lasting impression. We’ll explore music for the chalumeau--plus, torchsongs on historical instruments, on our featured release Songs Without Words on this week’s edition of Harmonia.
Three strands are braided together into this episode of Harmonia Uncut: copies of viols from Lombardy performing music from Lombardy that sets spiritual sonnets written by the first published female poet.
Enlightenment philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing said, “I'm coming to Leipzig, to the place where one can see the whole world in miniature.” We'll hear music from over 400 years of Leipzig church and city life on this edition of Harmonia.
On today’s podcast, we’ll hear a trouvère song by Gace Brulé with voice and vielle by Aaron Cain and Joanna Blendulf. Then...ever heard of David Baudinger? You won’t forget the name after you hear this performance by viola da gamba player Joshua Keller.
Join us as we explore the musical legacy of Notre Dame Cathedral — plus, a tribute to the late Michael Jaffee.
The supergroup 50 Shades of Baroque perform in a concert most intriguingly titled eponymously. We'll hear music by the Italian composer Antonio Caldara.
Gardens surprise and enchant us. Their fragrant smells can arise in one place from sweet violets, and in another from perfectly trimmed hedges. This week, we take a stroll along the grand canal of the gardens at Versailles, and hear music from a manuscript shaped like a heart.
Ensemble Black Tulip in concert, celebrating the delights of Arcadia, including pastoral solo cantatas by Handel and Alessandro Scarlatti.
We’ll hear some ‘Alkemical’ medieval songs and dance,
On Harmonia this week, we explore the work of 16th-century Italian composer Costanzo Festa.
Excerpts from renowned renaissance band Piffaro's March 2018 Philadelphia concert.
Explore the Jewish spring holiday of Purim, a commemoration of the Book of Esther. Purim celebrations are best known today for their gift-giving, wild costume parties, and delicious hamentashen. The story of Esther was also the inspiration for a number of musical works, as we will see.
This week, music of the Seville cathedral, then on to England and The Lily & The Rose.
This week, baroque composers remember their mentors, colleagues, and heroes through musical tributes known as tombeaux.
The last in our series of four programs about canon and fugue. This hour's devoted completely to Johann Sebastian Bach!