An exploration of early music, looking at early developments in musical performance and composition in Britain and abroad. UK only: please note that not all episodes are podcast.
As part of Radio 3's Baroque Spring season, Lucie Skeaping introduces the first of two Early Music Shows this weekend dedicated to French Baroque music. Today, Lucie explores the relationship between King Louis XIV and his favourite composer - Jean-Baptiste Lully.
Catherine Bott explores the idea of Telemann the Everyman: how he absorbed and excelled at so many musical styles, and purposely made his music available and appealing to the widest possible audience. She's joined by musicologist, flautist and all-round Telemann expert Steven Zohn.
Lucie Skeaping finds out how the Marian hymn "Salve Regina" fascinated European composers throughout the Renaissance era. The original chant is itself an exquisitely beautiful melody and it inspired several generations of composers to write soaring polyphonic settings around it, including Guerrero, Ockeghem, Victoria, Lassus and many others. As well as the chant itself, Lucie Skeaping introduces a selection of these settings and talks to Dr Owen Rees, Reader in Music at Oxford University, about ...
Lucie Skeaping explores the wedding of Princess Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, which took place in Whitehall 400 years ago this Valentine's Day. The celebrations were organised by Sir Francis Bacon, and included over a week of lavish entertainments including music by, among others Robert Johnson, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Campion and John Coperario, their contributions heard alongside popular ballads, catches and toe-tapping dance tunes.
Catherine Bott visits the Handel House in London where Ruth Smith has curated an imaginative exhibition on the life of Handel's librettist, Charles Jennens. It was Jennens who created the libretto for Handel's Messiah, he might even have suggested the idea to Handel, and he also furnished the composer with words for several other of his oratorios including Saul, Belshazzar, L'Allegro and perhaps Israel in Egypt. As such, Jennens often features as a footnote in Handel's biography, but the academi...
For centuries it's been widely accepted that the composer Daniel Purcell was the younger brother of the more celebrated Henry. Now, though, it's thought that they may actually have been cousins rather than brothers. Apart from a much loved Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis, Daniel Purcell's music has remained largely in the shadow of his older relative, but thanks to a handful of recent recordings, it's now being considered much more on its own merits. Lucie Skeaping looks at the life and music of ...
The revered French actor Gerard Depardieu is frequently in the news these days and not always for his acting. In the early 1990s Depardieu gave a brilliantly nuanced performance as the 17th/18th Century composer and viol player Marin Marais. The acclaimed film "Tous Les Matins du Monde" was one of the few movies to celebrate and popularise early music. Lucie Skeaping remembers the film and considers some of the music.
Lucie Skeaping explores the Accademia di Arcadia, a literary academy founded in the late 17th Century which boasted musician members including Corelli, Scarlatti and Pasquini.
The Baroque era saw some of the most significant developments in the history of western musical instruments, not least the appearance of the modern violin family which superseded the viols as the dominant string group. Not all the developments were as long lasting as the violin though. Catherine Bott looks back on the story and the music of the viola d'amore - or the "love viol" - an instrument much loved in the baroque for its distinctive tonal colours.
Catherine Bott talks about some of the composers who worked at the court of the colourful Christian IV of Denmark. The music includes works by imports to the court including Dowland, Bertolusi and Schutz, but also homegrown composers such as Hans Nielsen, Mogens Pederson and Soren Terkelsen.
Catherine Bott is in Cambridge for a look at the Trinity Carol Roll, one of the earliest sources of English polyphonic carols. She visits the Wren Library where the manuscript is kept and talks about the music and the significance of the collection with David Skinner who has recently recorded it all with his group Alamire. The thirteen works preserved in this manuscript include the patriotic 'Agincourt' carol, celebrating Henry V's victory over the French in 1415, and the most famous of all earl...
Lucie Skeaping explores the life and work of Cristóbal de Morales, by all accounts a difficult man to work with, but the greatest Spanish composer of his age, and the first Spanish composer of international renown.
Catherine Bott explores the life and musical settings of the work of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who was one of the most widely read writers in 16th Century Europe. His words were set by the great composers of the day and for many centuries after his death, but he was a troubled man who suffered from mental illness and died just days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Featuring Tasso settings from Monteverdi, Gesualdo and Handel among others.
On the first Sunday of Advent, Catherine Bott introduces a selection of early music for the Advent season. Including music from Bach, Charpentier and Praetorius and lesser known composers Vaclav Karel Holan Rovensky and Thomas Stoltzer.
Lucie Skeaping explores the tender art of the lullaby, from ancient melody to Elizabethan song, and discovers how this most intimate of forms offers inspiration to the world of early music. The act of rocking a child to sleep with a gentle tune is one of our most simple and natural forms of music-making. They are common to all cultures and ages, and though they are varied, they all share remarkable similarities. Their words are soothing, using onomatopoeic and nonsense sounds, like the 'ninna na...
Catherine Bott talks to the vocalist, harpist and scholar, Benjamin Bagby, about his career that has spanned more than 30 years. He founded the ensemble Sequentia with the late Barbara Thornton in 1977, a versatile group specialising in the performance and recording of Western European music from the period before 1300. They discuss his many projects with the ensemble and play music from his recordings including Hildegard of Bingen, Philippe le Chancelier and the 'Lost Songs' project - a collect...
The Muiderkring or Muider Circle was a group of contributors to the arts and sciences in the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when Dutch trade, science and art was among the most important in the world. Chief among this group was the historian, poet and playwright Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, who was appointed as Sheriff and Bailiff for the Gooiland, the area around Hilversum, in 1609, and was given a medieval moated castle to live in, the Muiderslot. Over the next four decades, he spent his ...
Lucie Skeaping presents a profile of the Baroque group Florilegium with their director Ashley Solomon and takes a look at the character and nature of the baroque dance suite. Florilegium have a reputation as one of this country's most outstanding early music groups. Founded in 1991 by the recorder player and flautist Ashley Solomon, the group specialises in baroque music and they have appeared in some of the most prestigious concert halls around the world. Lucie joins Ashley Solomon for a look a...
'One night I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil; he was my servant and anticipated my every wish. I had the idea of giving him my violin to see if he might play me some pretty tunes...'. Lucie Skeaping explores the life and works of Giuseppe Tartini, one of the great violin virtuosos of the 18th century and composer of one of its most celebrated and demonic instrumental works, yet also of some of its sweetest melodies.
As part of the Piano Season on the BBC, Lucie Skeaping presents the second of two programmes about the development of the piano during the eighteenth century. Lucie continues her survey of the development of the period piano, ending in the early nineteenth century with instruments for which Beethoven and Haydn wrote music which were recognisable precursors of the modern concert grand piano. With contributions from Steven Devine Professor of Fortepiano at Trinity College of Music, and Robert Levi...
As part of the Piano Season on the BBC, Lucie Skeaping presents the first of two programmes about the development of the piano during the eighteenth century. Lucie looks at the development of the piano from its origins in Florence with Bartolomeo Cristofori. With contributions from the period instrument restorer Kerstin Schwarz, and Steven Devine, Professor of Fortepiano at Trinity College of Music.
Jan Ladislav Dussek was a Bohemian composer and pianist of the late 18th Century. He was the first great touring piano virtuoso paving the way for the likes of Franz Liszt. It was Dussek who first thought of playing the piano sideways on to the audience - the better to show off his noble profile. Lucie Skeaping looks back on his life and music - much of which seems to anticipate the innovations and ideas of Beethoven and Schubert. Broadcast as part of the Piano Season on the BBC....
We may think of talent contests as a modern day phenomenon, but in 1683, King Louis XIV instituted an extraordinary competition to find four new composers suitable for his Chapelle Royal in Versailles. The successful applicants would each be given a season of the year to compose for the Chapel and the contest was advertised in a French gazette of the time. It attracted applications from the greatest French composers of the day, but ended in controversy with some sections of the press accusing Lo...
Catherine Bott chats to Fiona Maddocks about the remarkable life of the German abbess, visionary, poet and composer Hildegard of Bingen who died on 17th September 1179. Hildegard wrote that she experienced visions from an early age and as a child entered the monastery at Disibodenberg on the Rhine; Hildegard was later to found monasteries in Rupertsburg and later in Eibingen. Throughout her life, Hildegard continued to have visions and later began to record what she experienced, 'Scivias', which...
Catherine Bott presents a portrait of the intriguing Spanish monk and composer, Padre Antonio Soler. A disciple of Domenico Scarlatti, Soler entered the monastery at El Escorial, near Madrid, in 1752, where he remained for the last 31 years of his life, composing keyboard sonatas, chamber music and choral works.
Catherine Bott profiles harpsichordist & conductor Harry Bicket - regular at Glyndebourne & the New York Metropolitan Opera, and current musical director of The English Concert - about his career and his recordings. Music includes works by Handel, Bach, Pergolesi and Gluck in performances by Renée Fleming, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Susan Graham, Andreas Scholl and Elizabeth Watts.
Catherine Bott explores the life and music of the once celebrated but now forgotten 18th Century Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi, with the help of writer, critic and self-confessed Galuppi enthusiast Jonathan Keates.
Primarily remembered today as the teacher of Handel, the German musician FW Zachow was a renowned composer in his own right. In the first of a weekend of early music shows exploring some of his music, Lucie Skeaping explores his life and influence on Handel's music alongside a variety of Zachow's works.
Lucie Skeaping presents a programme featuring music by one of the most engaging and important Venetian composers, Giovanni Gabrieli, who died in August 400 years ago in 1612. Gabrieli spent his life working in Venice and held the esteemed position of organist at both St. Marks and San Rocco, so some of the musicians and singers must have worked in both establishments too. It is unclear exactly what compositions Gabrieli wrote specifically for the Scuole di San Rocco, but there are some interesti...
A journey through the multi-faceted solo keyboard music that the 18th Century Jean-Philippe Rameau composed in his long career, introduced by Lucie Skeaping. Rameau's first compositions were for the harpsichord and throughout his life he produced a rich and varied collection of short works for the instrument, many of which represent some of the greatest solo keyboard music of the French Baroque. Some of the pieces are dances; others are explorations of compositional and keyboard techniques; whil...
