Author: nwemf

“Summer of 65”

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The latest newsletter is now available for our members. If you are not a member and would like access then it only costs £10 a year and as well as the newsletter you have reduced rates at our events.

More workshop details

There are details and application forms for our day workshops in April and May on the workshops page

Deborah Roberts writes about Missa Confitebor Tibi. :-

 Enjoy a day exploring Palestrina’s  brilliant double-choir Missa Confitebor tibi. Although this mass was copied into one of the papal choir’s manuscripts in around 1577, it was originally dedicated to a Florentine convent. Like so many of Palestrina’s masses, the relatively small overall compass made it a perfect candidate for performance by all female or all male choirs – with transposition down a 4th or 5th bringing it into the range of adult male voices. It’s important to remember that the papal choirs did not include boys’ voices.
What has been largely forgotten until recent times is the huge importance of convent music in 16th century Italy. With so many women destined to become nuns, and priority in the form of reduced dowries given to musically talented girls, it is small wonder that convent choirs contained some of the best musicians in Italy. They not only sang, but in several convents also played a variety of instruments. Thus they could tackle a huge range of music, and not only that composed for equal voices.
We have become so accustomed to hearing sacred polyphony sung a cappella, that we have lost sight of the fact that the format in which music was copied or published indicated only one way of performing it.
This workshop will revive a sound that would have been very familiar to anyone living in or visiting a renaissance Italian city. The nuns would not be visible, but their music poured out through grills and screens from their own private cloistered chapel into the public church beyond. And anyone could listen to them. Not so for any of the great ducal chapel choirs, or the choir of the Sistine Chapel. That was for the few!

Concert in Manchester 9th February

The following information has just been received from Godfried Croenen.
Over the Christmas period I met a young professional violinist who is trying to set up a baroque orchestra in Manchester to have regular concerts in the region. Their debut concert will be on Saturday 9 February. I will be going and I thought I’d share this with you.

Tickets are very reasonably prized and can be bought online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/manchester-baroque-an-evening-of-baroque-concertos-tickets-53259098397?fbclid=IwAR0vMQbo6A5eugFeGSg2NMEmgmbS1HcAyETfVto2KR_jPqxj267w4_cRfHk

The programme looks very attractive indeed.

Arcangelo Corelli                            Concerto Grosso, D major, Op. 6/4

Antonio Vivaldi                                Flute concerto Del Gardellino, D major, RV428

Antonio Vivaldi                                Concerto for 3 violins L’Estro Armonico, Op.3/3, G major, RV428

Georg Philipp Telemann              Concerto for Flute and Recorder TWV 52

Antonio Vivaldi                                Concerto for Strings, d minor, R127

Georg Philipp Telemann              Concerto Polonois, TWV 43:G7

Johann Sebastian Bach                 Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, BWV 1050