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2021 was a tumultuous year for us all, but one thing we could count on was some great music.
Jeanne Lamon, the violinist and former music director of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, died on June 20 at age 71. She succumbed to cancer, which she had been diagnosed with a few months prior.
Although shape notes were introduced in 18th-century England, this unique musical notation found popularity in the United States: first in New England and later in the American South. It’s recently experienced a renaissance of sorts…
Every year, the holiday season brings a new assortment of fabulous and festive Christmas albums.
Test your knowledge of early music by seeing if you can name these predecessors of our modern instruments.
Grammy-winning lutenist Paul O’Dette shares Elizabethan ballads and Scottish tunes in a video concert livestream.
The Grammy-winning “dean of American lutenists” shares a program of Elizabethan ballads and Scottish tunes.
From medieval times to modernity, women have made important contributions to all aspects of music, including as composers.
Does a city have its own distinctive musical style? The early music ensemble Apollo’s Fire and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell explore that question with their upcoming Chicago-area performance, “O Jerusalem! Crossroads of Three Faiths.”
As part of an Impromptu of secular and devotional holiday music from around the world, conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley led Music of the Baroque and organist Stephen Alltop in a performance of this lesser-known French Baroque Christmas song, ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault.
Welcome to the wonderful world of medieval manuscripts! You’ll find that medieval manuscripts are not nearly as inaccessible as you might think. They are true multimedia events: for the sports lover, there are depictions of cats playing tennis. Music aficionados will find illustrations of rabbits and foxes playing viols and flutes. From the sacred to the profane, they prove without a doubt that the Dark Ages were anything but.
Montserrat Figueras, who specialized in early music, is being remembered by her native city.
Here are just a few of our many favorite French composers, from medieval to modern, that might be new to you.
Watch Rubén Dubrovsky and Third Coast Baroque perform the virtuosic music of Vivaldi in the beautiful Trinity United Methodist Church in Wilmette, Illinois.
Maestro Harry Bicket shared what’s in his “little box of tricks” to help musicians in modern orchestras sound period perfect.
“Ariane et Bachus” was first performed by the Académie Royale de Musique in 1696, and Haymarket Opera Company’s production marks the first revival of work in 321 years.
Salamone Rossi’s skill as a violinist and composer was highly valued at the Catholic court of Mantua. But as a Jew, he was still was seen as an interloper.
You may not be familiar with his music, but we all benefit from his work. Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is often called the “Savior of Church Music.”
“A choir is like any instrument. But because it’s people, a choir is an instrument that varies far more than a string orchestra would vary, for example, or an organ.”
Though we tend to remember our favorite composers for their music first and foremost, many of them were virtuosic in more ways than one.
“Belle, bonne, sage” is a love song whose title translates to “Lovely, good, and wise.” And if the score looks like a Valentine’s Day card, the lyrics follow.
Ever since the Middle Ages, musicians in Europe eagerly adopted musical traditions from around the world, from as far as the Indian subcontinent to the shores of Northern Africa.
The extraordinary story of Hildegard von Bingen.
“There are all kinds of ways to play Bach, and that depends on your personality and how you want to deal with Bach’s music.”
“Telemann has written… some truly funny arias about Don Q.’s dreams of chivalry and Sancho’s donkey and mishaps”