Baroque&Before

Wednesdays at 10:00 pm

A fresh feast of early music every week.

Join host Candice Agree for WFMT’s exciting weekly program of early music. Baroque&Before explores works written before 1750, featuring live concert recordings from some of the world’s most prestigious early music festivals, as well as commercially released recordings from WFMT’s vast library. From Russia to the Americas, from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean and Middle East, Candice presents internationally known artists on the early music scene, crafting a delightful mix of musicianship, music, and history.

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Visitors to a manger, one on an elephant, offer gifts to a newborn.

Bach & Kuhnau Magnificats for Advent

December 6, 2023, 10:00 pm

A program for Advent featuring Magnificats and festival cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Kuhnau.

Detail of a framed marginal illustration of a man lighting the Hanukkah lamp with a congregation behind him

Handel’s “Judas Maccabaeus”

December 13, 2023, 10:00 pm

Handel recast the story of Judas Maccabeus as a celebratory ode to King George II, with music of unprecedented refinement, gripping suspense, and drama.

Haloed Man and haloed woman with two cattle lookng over a haloed baby. An angel watches from above.

A Baroque Christmas was Concerto Copenhagen & Il Giardino Armonico

December 20, 2023, 10:00 pm

The Christmas season was an extremely busy time for church composers in the eighteenth century: congregations expected newly written music every year. A tradition emerged in the early seventeenth century of composing music with the aim of recreating the pastoral atmosphere of the first Christmas Eve. On this special Christmas edition of Baroque&Before, Concerto Copenhagen starts off our program with ...

a bucolic setting of animals and naked humans relaxing in nature

Songs for Troubled Times: Music from Reformation England

June 28, 2023

Male vocal ensemble Cinquecento, specializing in music of the sixteenth century, brings us works by Tallis, Byrd, Tye, and others.

A female flutist and female lutenist are among seven women and four men, enjoy the outdoors and each others' company.

The Gesualdo Six: Josquin’s Legacy

June 21, 2023

Chansons, motets, and antiphons that illuminate the music of Josquin des Prez and his Franco-Flemish circle in the late 15 and early 16th centuries.

a young shepherd plays recorder, while a young woman with a tambourine and violin observes him.

Handel’s “Aminta e Fillide” with Opera Settecento & Fair Oriana

June 14, 2023

Handel was twenty-two when he wrote this pastoral cantata about a love-struck shepherd and the nymph he's fallen for.

The Paumgartner family, kneeling on the ground. On the left are the brothers Lucas and Stephan with their father Martin, and Barbara Paumgartner's second husband, Hans Schönbach. Barbara Paumgartner with her two daughters.

Sacred works of Hieronymus Praetorius

June 7, 2023

Spanning the late Renaissance and the early Baroque, North German composer and organist Hieronymous Praetorius is revered for his polychoral settings of masses and the Magnificat.

Vault of the central nave of the Thomaskirche, Leipzig

Missa Amabilis

May 31, 2023

Among Venetian Antonio Caldara’s seventy-plus operas, thirty-plus oratorios, motets, and sonatas is the work we’ll hear on this edition of Baroque&Before: the Missa amabilis, a gem of inventive melody, daring harmony, and skillful counterpoint. Tonight’s program was recorded live in concert May 28, 2022 in St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, as part of the German Chorus Festival. Fabian Enders leads the ...

musicians of Collegium 1704 taken in a church4

Slavonic Baroque with Collegium 1704

May 24, 2023

Václav Luks leads Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704 in Baroque works by Slavic composers: Poland's Mielczewski and Pękiel, and Bohemia's Zelenka.

detail of an ornate 17th-century harpsichord, featuring an octave of keys, and part of the soundbopard

The Life & Legacy of Harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper

May 17, 2023

Honoring the late keyboardist Kenneth Cooper, best known for his improvisational skills, his spontaneity, and his rediscovery of 18th-century works, as well as performances of modern works written for the harpsichord.

Orpheus, bowing a violin, surrounded by animals, nymphs, and satyrs

Florie Valiquette & Les Talens Lyriques

May 10, 2023

Soprano Florie Valiquette joins historically-informed early music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques for a delightful mix of dances, arias, cantatas and instrumental works.

The Prodigal Son and a woman dining, with servants and a musician playing the lute

Corund Ensemble & Tomás Luis de Victoria

April 19, 2023

Known as the “Spanish Palestrina,” Tomás Luis de Victoria has been called the greatest of all Iberian composers. Corund, the Swiss vocal ensemble founded in Lucerne in 1993 and specializing in sacred music of the Renaissance and Baroque, presents a concert of sacred works by Tomás Luis. The Requiem Mass, composed for the funeral of the Empress Maria, is the ...

Songs & Laments of the Sephardim

April 12, 2023

Baroque&Before celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt with a program of sacred, paraliturgical, celebratory, and secular music of the Jews of the Mediterranean.

The Cardinall’s Musick: Works for Passiontide

April 5, 2023

Andrew Carwood directs early-music vocal ensemble The Cardinall’s Musick in a program titled Christ on this Cross: A Meditation on the Crucifixion; a concert of works for Passiontide.

Bach in Norway

March 29, 2023

From Oslo, an all-Bach program performed by Barokkanerne, Scandinavia’s first independent professional baroque orchestra.

Arcangelo: Handel, Bach & Vivaldi

March 22, 2023

Soprano Carolyn Sampson and countertenor Tim Mead join Arcangelo, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, for a program comprising music of three leading Baroque composers.

Iberian Ensemble poses together with their instruments in a cathedral

Baroque Music in the Iberian & Italian Courts

March 15, 2023

Iberian Ensemble, founded in 2014, comprising baroque violin, viola da gamba, traverso, and harpsichord, presents historically informed interpretations that reveal the stylistic richness of Baroque repertory. On this edition of Baroque&Before, the focus is on instrumental works of the 17th and 18th centuries from Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. This week’s program was recorded live in concert March 3, 2022 in ...

Maddalena Casulana & Barbara Strozzi Rediscovered

March 8, 2023

In one of the most important musicological discoveries of recent years, the lost Alto partbook of Maddalena Casulana’s 1583 First Book of five-voice madrigals has been found.

A Portuguese Pilgrimage

February 22, 2023

On this week’s edition of Baroque&Before, Giulio Prandi leads the Ghislieri Chorus, Orchestra, and soloists in Mattutino de’ Morti by Davide Perez, born in Naples of Spanish heritage. The work, written when he was mestre de capela at the court of José I, is considered the most significant musical work of 18th century Portugal. Selections from Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki’s Conductus ...

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: “Elle est originale”

February 8, 2023

“Elle est originale.” These words were how King Louis XIV described the young Élisabeth Jacquet. Tonight’s program features the French ensemble Nevermind in chamber music of the gifted Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, whose contributions to the musical life of Louis XIV’s court was exceptional, and who composed in many of the musical forms of her day to the admiration ...

The Elusive Handel

February 1, 2023

Well known for his vocal music, Handel's chamber music, written sporadically and published chaotically, is much more elusive.

Folías & Romanescas: Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI

January 18, 2023

Savall returned to Ascona with Hespèrion XXI Ensemble with a program of “Folias & Romanescas,” featuring works from the Old and New Worlds.

El Gran Teatro Del Mundo: The Lullists; German Baroque Music à la française

January 11, 2023

A program of “goût réuni,” or united taste, brings us the music of German composers inspired and influenced by the French style. Known as “Lullists” after Jean-Baptiste Lully, works Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, Georg Muffat, and Georg Philipp Telemann are featured this week, presented by El Gran Teatro Del Mundo under the direction of Julio Caballero Pérez. Tonight’s program was ...

Evenings with Kerry Frumkin