As part of the BBC's Sound of Cinema season, Lucie Skeaping presents a profile of the harpsichord in film scores. #BBCSoundofCinema Lucie looks back on the pioneering work of Wanda Landowska in stimulating a renewed interest in the instrument in the first third of the 20th Century, and how the distinctive sound of the instrument quickly found a use in the cinema. She considers how the harpsichord has been used in film to suggest a sense of the past; a sense of the present; and how its created a ...
Oct 20, 2013•25 min
From the early years of the Renaissance, composers portrayed subjects from Greek mythology. These stories provided particular inspiration as the new operatic genre took hold in the early 17th century. The 18th century saw the philosophical revolution of the Enlightenment spread throughout Europe and accompanied by a certain reaction against Greek myth, there was a tendency to insist on the scientific and philosophical achievements of Ancient Greece. The myths, however, continued to provide an im...
Oct 13, 2013•21 min
Virtually unknown a few decades ago, Georg Philipp Telemann's orchestral suite 'Hamburger Ebb' und Fluth' (Hamburg Ebb and Flow) is fast becoming a rival to Handel's 'Water Music'. Written in 1723 to celebrate the centenary of the Hamburg Admiralty it tackles watery subjects such as the sea deities Thetis, Neptune and Triton, sporting Naiads and even the city's drainage channels! Lucie Skeaping explores the work and its musical context. Contains a complete performance of the suite by Ensemble Ze...
Oct 06, 2013•15 min
Catherine Bott looks at the vocal and choral music of Domenico Scarlatti, best known today for his 555 keyboard sonatas. Having grown up in Italy with a rather domineering opera composer as a father, it was inevitable that Scarlatti should have picked up some of his musical influences from the stage, and from the church. By the time Scarlatti settled in Lisbon in the 1720s to work for the Portuguese royal family, he was already one of the best-known opera composers in Europe and had a reputation...
Sep 29, 2013•13 min
As part of the Sound of Cinema season, Catherine Bott looks at the story and the soundtrack of the 1994 film "Farinelli" - a biopic of the great 18th century castrato and his colourful relationships with women, with his older brother and with the composers Handel and Porpora. It's been a long time since we had a real life castrato singer in our midst, and the only recording we have of one is Alessandro Moreschi, who died in 1922 and was already at the end of his performing career when the rather...
Sep 21, 2013•13 min
Catherine Bott gives us a whistle-stop A-Z tour of how early music has been featured in mainstream films to both poignant and ironic effect; from Allegri and Albinoni to Zadok and Zoolander. #BBCSoundofCinema.
Sep 14, 2013•21 min
The infamous life of the Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo is full of drama, intrigue and death. Among accusations of a double murder, witchcraft and masochism stands an extraordinary body of music with its own tortured chromatic sound world. To mark the 400th anniversary of the composer's death, Catherine Bott talks with renowned Gesualdo expert Professor Glenn Watkins to explore whether an understanding of the time in which the isolated Prince lived can cast any further light on his seemingl...
Sep 08, 2013•24 min
The singer Donald Greig has established a long career performing with groups such as the Tallis Scholars and the Orlando Consort, of which he is a founder member. Last year he wrote his first novel - Time Will Tell - which recently came out in paperback. It tells parallel stories set in the 1990s world of modern early music performance, and in the 16th century world of Franco-Flemish composers and musicians including Josquin and Ockeghem. Donald Greig talks to Catherine Bott about his novel and ...
Aug 31, 2013•20 min
At the Hermitage in St Petersburg hangs one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings: the Lute Player. An androgynous young man looks out at us as he plucks the strings of this most iconic of Renaissance instruments, and a music book lies in front of him. Close inspection reveals that not only has Caravaggio carefully painted a real piece of lute music, but we can even identify its composer - Jacques Arcadelt. Today Lucie Skeaping explores the life of Jacques Arcadelt, one of the most mysterious, f...
Aug 25, 2013•17 min
Catherine Bott presents a profile of the German composer and organist Matthias Weckmann, who flourished in Dresden and Hamburg during the 17th century. Weckmann was a pupil of Henirich Schütz, and the organist and composer Praetorius, and who made a major contribution to the musical life in Protestant Germany. Although few compositions survive, Weckmann wrote some exceptional music, including several beautiful sacred vocal concertos, settings of devotional texts for voices and instruments: Cathe...
Aug 18, 2013•13 min
To celebrate the 850th anniversary of the first stone of Notre Dame de Paris being laid, Catherine Bott explores the beginnings of music in the great cathedral.
Aug 10, 2013•13 min
The Renaissance English composer John Dowland was a prolific writer of songs accompanied by the lute, and the performance of those songs has sustained and informed the careers of many great singers and lute players over the decades. Lucie Skeaping takes a look back at how the interpretation and performance style of Dowland songs has evolved over the last century and plays a selection of recordings from singers and lute players past and present. To help her are studio guests Jacob Heringman, curr...
Aug 06, 2013•30 min
Catherine Bott presents a programme of music by the 17th century Italian composer and virtuoso violinist, Giuseppe Torelli. Most famous for his trumpet concertos, Torelli also wrote many wonderful pieces for his own instrument and was at the forefront of the early development of the Concerto Grosso.
Jul 27, 2013•13 min
Lucie Skeaping enlists the expertise of Baroque flautist and recorder player Peter Holtslag to celebrate the life and music of Jacques-Martin Hotteterre "Le Romain"; performer, writer and pedagogue who died 250 years ago this week and did more than any other to enhance the popularity of the "new" transverse flute. Hotteterre's music reflects his career, achievements and enthusiasms and we'll hear performances of complete works alongside demonstrations of the instrumental techniques and ornamenta...
Jul 20, 2013•26 min
Lucie Skeaping recreates a possible day in the life of King Louis XIV. Upon waking in his sumptuous bedchamber, the king follows a busy schedule before entertaining guests at supper and retiring late in the evening. At every part of the day, musicians were on hand to entertain him, to soothe him or to trumpet his arrival. Olivier Baumont - harpsichordist and expert on French Baroque music - guides Lucie through the palace of Versailles to illustrate some of the music the king may have heard....
Jul 06, 2013•30 min
The National Gallery's exhibition of paintings by Vermeer and his Dutch 17th-century contemporaries - every one of which depicts musicmaking of one kind or another - opened earlier this week. Lucie Skeaping takes a tour of the exhibition with curator Marjorie E. Wieseman, and chooses music to go with it, including works by Sweelinck, Van Eyck and Johann Schop.
Jul 02, 2013•27 min
Lucie Skeaping and musicologist David Skinner consider the music that might have been heard by Richard III. In September last year archeologists from Leicester University made the exciting discovery in a car park of a Medieval skeleton which was later proved to be that of King Richard III. Thanks largely to Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard as a dysfunctional, ambitious and murderous villain, the character of the Yorkist king has been much discussed over the centuries, in spite of the fact that...
Jun 22, 2013•23 min
As part of Radio 3 Celebrating British Music, Catherine Bott presents a comprehensive profile of the composer William Byrd and some of his most glorious music, in conversation with conductor Andrew Carwood.
Jun 15, 2013•40 min
David McGuinness visits Stirling Castle and the Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh, to trace the story of Mary Queen of Scots' reign, and the music which surrounded her. From the devotional masses and motets by Robert Carver - so popular with Mary's father, King James V, to the jolly French dances she would have enjoyed during her first marriage to Francis Dauphin of France, Mary remained a music lover throughout her short life. Queen Mary's favourite attendant and confidante during her secon...
Jun 08, 2013•30 min
Celebrating British music, Lucie Skeaping samples the sounds that would have been heard in the inner circles of the English royal courts from Henry VIII to George III. Includes works by Henry VIII himself, plus Lawes, Purcell and JC Bach.
Jun 01, 2013•16 min
The Villa d'Este's gardens are a triumph of Baroque architecture and design. Catherine Bott travels to Tivoli to explore the many fountains there and the music connected with the gardens and the man who commissioned them: Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, patron of many composers, among them a no lesser figure than Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. First broadcast in March 2009.
May 28, 2013•28 min
Immortalised by Wagner in his famous opera, Lucie Skeaping looks back on the life and music of the real Hans Sachs and his fellow Mastersingers in 16th Century Germany. First broadcast in March 2007.
May 19, 2013•18 min
On today's Early Music Show Catherine Bott talks to David Wulstan, a pioneering figure in the understanding and interpretation of early music in general, and of music of the Tudor period in particular. In the 1960s and 1970s David Wulstan created The Clerkes of Oxenford. With this group of singers he worked tirelessly to produce revelatory recordings of the music of Tallis, Sheppard, Gibbons, Tye, White, and others, which revolutionized the way it was interpreted, and the way we now hear it toda...
May 11, 2013•29 min
Lucie Skeaping looks at music and the 18th-century French painter Antoine Watteau. No fewer than a third of Watteau's canvases depict musical scenes. The Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is currently running an exhibition of Watteau's work "underscored" by musical items chosen by the great French Early Music specialist, William Christie. With this in mind, this programme examines the "musical" world of the 18th-century's artistic master of evocative sensuality and the fete galante.
May 04, 2013•13 min
Catherine Bott presents a profile of Andre Campra - a musical innovator, and something of a rebel at the turn of the 18th Century. His stint as Music Director of Notre Dame Cathedral was wracked with controversy, thanks to Campra's wishes to branch out into music for the theatre...a pastime which was abhorred by the ecclesiastical authorities. When Campra produced the first ever opera-ballet in 1697, he did so under a thinly-disguised pseudonym, but the acclaim he received as a result of the suc...
Apr 28, 2013•11 min
Lucie Skeaping considers the importance of wind music in the middle ages, through the work of one of today's award winning period ensembles. The ensemble of shawms, bombards and trumpet or sackbut (trombone), known as the alta capella, was one of the most striking and influential ensembles of the middle ages. It was the ensemble most often heard in mediaeval cities, and one of the first ensembles to be placed on the civic payroll. The alta capella was the nearest that the middle ages had to our ...
Apr 20, 2013•13 min
Catherine Bott looks at music marking the ceremonial signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, with celebration pieces by Handel and William Croft. Handel's "Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate" was written to celebrate the Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession. The treaties between several European states, including Spain, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Savoy and the Dutch Republic, helped end the war. The treaties were concluded ...
Apr 13, 2013•10 min
Catherine Bott explores the diverse music associated with the Medieval texts of the Carmina Burana. She talks about the difficulty of turning the original manuscript into music and the variety of interpretations that have ensued. Although commonly associated with drinking and bawdiness the Carmina Burana also contains religious texts. Marcel Peres's extensive research into these has resulted in some deeply emotive music that is not to be missed.
Apr 07, 2013•13 min
In today's edition of the Early Music Show, and as part of Radio 3's Baroque Spring season, Catherine Bott goes in search of the unknown baroque. Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and the Scarlattis are familiar names to us, composers synonymous with one of the richest periods in musical history. But Venice, Leipzig, and London weren't the only places experiencing the ear-shock of baroque music - Prague, Warsaw, and Ljubljana were home to composers whose names haven't had quite the same impact on posterity,...
Mar 23, 2013•14 min
As part of Baroque Spring Catherine Bott uses the themes of gods and monsters to look at the brilliant characterisation in Monteverdi's operas. Looking specifically at L'Orfeo and L'Incoronazione di Poppea Catherine shows how Monteverdi treats works of mythological stories with very modern dramatic devices. Broadcast as part of Radio 3's "Baroque Spring".
Mar 18, 2013•12 min
