HUELGAS ENSEMBLE & BL!NDMAN

Programmaboekje

Agnus Dei (7-stemmig)

Mozart Machine

In the Renaissance, musicians received instruction at the courts and churches where they worked. An important aspect of their study was contrapunto, the art of combining several melody lines and bringing them into perfect harmony. Often this ingenious principle was practised by enhancing an existing song with notes of longer duration (a 'cantus firmus') with melodious second voices. Experienced musicians could even enhance a cantus firmus ‘on sight’. This improvised contrapunto (or ‘contrapunto alla mente’) is at the basis of countless compositions on paper. The Huelgas Ensemble and BL!NDMAN [sax] explore 15th and 16th century music in which secular and religious 'standards' prop up a creative polyphony of whimsical twists and hallucinatory repetitions. Composers such as Lassus, Desprez and De Rore are coupled with 20th and 21st century 'aleatoric' music or chance music.

Huelgas Ensemble
Paul Van Nevel: Conductor and artistic direction
ichaëla Riener, Sabine Lutzenberger: cantus
Kaspar Kröner: altus
Achim Schulz, George Pooley, Tom Phillips, Matthew Vine: tenor
Tim Scott Whiteley, Erik Van Nevel: baritone
Martin Backhaus: bass

BL!NDMAN [sax]
Koen Maas: soprano and baritone saxophone
Roeland Vanhoorne: alto saxophone
Piet Rebel: tenore saxophone
Raf Minten: baritone saxophon

Pieter Maessens (1505-1562), Tota Pulchra es
Johannes Ghiselin (1455-1507), O Florens rosa
Orlandus Lassus (1532-1594), Epitaphium divi Bernardi
BL!NDMAN goes solo
Antoine Brumel (c.1460-c.1520), Agnus Dei ‘Et ecce terre motus’
Pieter Maessens, Per signus crucis
Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565), Calami sonum ferentes
Huelgas goes solo
Josquin Deprez (c.1450/55-1521), Praeter rerum seriem
Orlandus Lassus, Omnia tempus habent