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.
The Bach-Abel Concerts. Lucie Skeaping talks to the music historian, Simon Heighes about a famous concert series which began two hundred and fifty years ago this year and which lit up London's concert life following the death of Handel. The Bach-Abel series continued for thirty years and with it J.C Bach and his compatriot, Carl Friedrich Abel introduced their opera and concert arias, symphonies and keyboard works to Georgian London.
Lucie Skeaping explores Artaserse, one of the most popular opera libretti by Metastasio, the great 18th century dramatist, featuring Artaxerxes I, King of Persia. The libretto was originally written for and first set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1730 for Rome, and it was subsequently set by dozens of later composers. In England, Thomas Arne's 1762 Artaxerxes is set to an English libretto that is based on Metastasio's. Lucie Skeaping introduces extracts from a few of the 90 known settings of Met...
Lucie Skeaping presents a profile of the career of the British tenor Nigel Rogers, who celebrates his 80th birthday this week.
Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have specialised in the performance of Renaissance polyphony for over thirty years. They have built a reputation for bringing some of the greatest European church music of the 16th and 17th centuries onto the concert platform. So what has prompted such an enthusiasm? Lucie Skeaping explores with Peter and the group some of the qualities and the ethos of Renaissance polyphony. She learns how working with this music has encouraged the group to find a distinct...
International Women's Day, celebrating female composers: Barbara Strozzi Lucie Skeaping is joined by Laurie Stras to profile the life and music of the prolific 17th Century Venetian composer and singer Barbara Strozzi. @bbcradio3 #womensday Born in 1617, the daughter of a servant girl Barbara was brought up and educated by the poet Giulio Strozzi, who was probably her father. She first tasted fame at her father's 'Academies' in Venice for her 'bold and graceful manner' before going on to publish...
Lucie Skeaping explores the life and musical legacy of the 17th Century French harpsichordist, organist and composer Louis Couperin, with contributions from Christophe Rousset and performances by Rousset, Bob van Asperen, Davitt Moroney and Glen Wilson.
Lucie Skeaping investigates the music of 18th- and early 19th-century Cuba in the company of Andrew McGregor and musicologist Miriam Escudero. Includes music by Esteban Salas, Juan Paris and Cayetano Pagueras, and performances by Ensemble Ars Longa La Havana.
Lucie Skeaping explores the life of Johann Georg Pisendel, a virtuoso German violinist in the late 17th & early 18th Centuries to whom composers like Vivaldi and Telemann dedicated works and whose own solo violin compositions are said to have provided the inspiration for JS Bach's own solo Sonatas and Partitas.
Lucie Skeaping looks at the life and music of the Viennese composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil. Although today he's largely relegated to the footnotes of musical history, in his day he was internationally admired, not least in the Mozart household. His tercentenary year gives cause for a fresh look at this founding father of the Viennese Classical style.
"East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." So wrote Rudyard Kipling, but in the world of early music at least, the artistry of the Middle East exerted a huge influence on the instruments and compositions of Europe. From Greek music theory to wandering minstrels, and poetic song-forms to filigree melodies, Lucie Skeaping surveys the musical legacy of this lively contact, visiting medieval dance-music, Sephardic song and plainchant along the way.
Sophie Yates presents a profile of the French harpsichordist and composer Jacques Duphly, the tercentenary of whose birth falls this month.
Lucie Skeaping visits Hampton Court Palace to find out about the music written during the short, but eventful reign of King Edward VI. She traces Edward's story from cradle to grave with guest contributor Michele Price - manager of the choral foundation at Hampton Court Palace.
Lucie Skeaping visits the Scilly Isles to learn about the actress and singer Ann Cargill, who drowned in a dramatic shipwreck there in 1784, and whose ghost is said to have haunted Rosevear Island ever since. Ann made her London stage debut in 1771 at the tender age of eleven in Thomas Arne's opera "The Fairy Prince" at Covent Garden. Later she eloped with a married man eighteen years her senior, and her father washed his hands of her. She continued to be a popular draw at Drury Lane, in product...
Lucie Skeaping investigates an ancient musical tradition whereby people went from door to door singing carols and were rewarded with hot mulled cider. Wassailing can be traced back possibly as far as Anglo-Saxon times and has evolved over time to become associated with Christmas. Lucie Skeaping introduces some of the music that has been associated with the wassailing tradition and her guests include the historian Joanna Crosby, from Essex Univeristy, who has a particular interest in apples....
A special repeat of Catherine Bott's interview with the distinguished conductor, keyboardist and musicologist, Christopher Hogwood, who died earlier this year. Catherine chats to him about his career as one of the major proponents of the early music movement, including Christopher's early work with David Munrow in the Early Music Consort of London and the orchestra he founded in 1973 - The Academy of Ancient Music. The music on the programme comes from his choice of some of his own favourite rec...
Catherine Bott presents a profile of Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, who despite being renowned as an organist and composer during his lifetime, died in poverty.
As part of Decameron Nights, Lucie Skeaping talks to David Fallows, Emeritus Professor of Musicology at the University of Manchester, about music in Italy in the time of Boccaccio.
Clare Salaman on forgotten instruments which were once part of everyday musical life. Clare considers why instruments which were once part of musical life - such as the vielle, the bray harp, the hurdy gurdy and the viola organista - are now rarely heard. Some were particularly suited to certain styles of music and unable to keep up when fashions changed. Others, while astonishing, intriguing and even beautiful in their design proved totally impractical for everyday use. Clare chooses recordings...
Lucie Skeaping presents the second of two tributes to Frans Bruggen looking at the conducting years, she is joined by flautist Lisa Beznosiuk of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the clarinettist Eric Hoeprich, from Bruggne's own Orchestra of the 18th Century.
In the first of two tribute programmes to the late Frans Bruggen, the recorder player Piers Adams reflects on Bruggen's career as a recorder virtuoso. The programme features recordings by Frans Bruggen performing music by Handel, Vivaldi, De Lavigne, Telemann, Walter, Sammartini, Hotteterre and JS Bach.
Piers Adams celebrates CPE Bach's 300th anniversary year with a visit to the city of Hamburg, where the 54-year-old Emanuel Bach began a new career as music director to the city's churches. Dutch keyboard player Pieter Jan Belder samples the vast collection of fortepianos and clavichords at the Museum of Decorative Arts, and there is a visit to the crypt of the Michaeliskirche where Emanuel Bach is buried. CPE Bach's three decades in Hamburg were the happiest and most productive of his career. H...
Lucie Skeaping is joined by Sir Nicholas Kenyon in a tribute to conductor and musicologist Christopher Hogwood, who died last Wednesday. They consider the extraordinary impact he made in early, baroque and classical music performance, and introduce some of his iconic and groundbreaking recordings. 'Christopher Hogwood was one of the true pioneers of early music performance. It is not an exaggeration to say that he changed our musical taste, and changed the sound of baroque and classical music fo...
Lucie Skeaping and conductor Stephen Rice explore the music of the Franco-Flemish composer Pierre de Manchicourt, who died 450 years ago today.
Lucie Skeaping is joined by harpsichordist Martin Perkins to explore the music 18th-century audiences in Birmingham and the Midlands would have known. The programme includes rarely heard works by John Pixell, Richard Mudge, Joseph Harris, Barnabas Gunn, Jeremiah Clark of Worcester and Capel Bond. John Pixell: An Invitation to the Red-Breast Louise Wayman (soprano) Musical and Amicable Society Martin Perkins (director) Richard Mudge: Concerto No. 2 in D minor Barockorchester Capriccio Basel Domin...
Lucie Skeaping explores the origins of Klezmer, a musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, with musicologist Dr Alexander Knapp. Played by professional musicians called 'klezmorim', the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations. Compared with most other European folk music styles, little is known about the history of klezmer music, but research now traces it back to medieval times through synagogue chan...
Lucie Skeaping presents a programme which looks at the development of the Baroque bassoon, from its forerunner - the curtel, dulcian or bajon. With the help of the historian and author Maggie Kilbey and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's Andrew Watts, they chart the spread and popularity of the instrument throughout Europe and the New World, for use in church music and in chamber ensembles. The music is a very diverse selection, including works by Vivaldi, Schütz, Padilla, Salazar, Bert...
In the second of our three programmes marking the 250th anniversary of the death of Jean Philippe Rameau, Sophie Yates visits the Royal Academy of Music in London to explore Rameau's mastery of dance music in his works for the theatre. She's joined by the art historian Clare Hornsby, the dancer and choreographer Christopher Tudor and the composer and harpsichordist David Gordon, to examine an engraving which boasts a fascinating genesis and which has an intriguing link to Rameau's opera Castor a...
Clare Salaman is fascinated by the continuing debate about authenticity - or Historically Informed Practice (H.I.P) - in Early Music. How can we be sure that performances are historically accurate, and how important is it that they are? Clare talks to Catherine Mackintosh about early developments in performance practice pioneered by David Munrow and his contemporaries, and about Catherine's own work with the Academy of Ancient Music and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The baroque viol...
In 1702, the 19-year-old Philip V of Spain came from his native France to Naples for a month. For this occasion, the Neopolitan based composer Alessandro Scarlatti was joined by the other great Italian composer of the day, Arcangelo Corelli, with mixed results! On the 350th anniversary of Scarlatti's birth, Catherine Bott explores the stories that surround the music and entertainments put on for this occasion.
Sophie Yates visits The Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments in Edinburgh to play extracts from Rameau's Pièces de clavecin on three extraordinary double-manual French harpsichords made in the late 1700s and fully restored to playing condition. She talks to the museum's curator, Darryl Martin, about the history of the instruments, and to harpsichord maker Andrew Garlick about how they each produce their own unique sound.
