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.

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”