Workshops & Courses

Workshops for female voices offer a unique opportunity to experience some of the growing repertoire that would have been performed by women, and especially nuns from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Much of this music has been researched and edited by Laurie herself, and participants can find themselves taking part in first performances in modern times.

Workshops and courses for 2025 are listed on the Events Diary

Music and Ritual in a C16th Florentine Convent

The Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript, MS 27766 in the library of the Brussels Conservatoire, is the only surviving manuscript of polyphonic repertoire from a sixteenth-century convent.  The two nuns named on its binding, Clemenzia Sostegni and Agnoleta Biffoli, lived at the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, which later became home to Suor Maria Celeste Galilei, ‘Galileo’s Daughter’.

The manuscript contains 78 works for equal voices that would have adorned the convent’s worship at its most solemn feasts and for its daily devotions. This full day workshop will introduce you to this fascinating record of the musical lives of Florentine nuns at the end of the Renaissance, exploring its song, psalmody, motets, and imitation masses.

 

 

 

 

Palestrina: Missa Confitebor tibi for eight voices

An full day of singing and playing a large scale festal mass as it might have been performed for special occasions in Italian convents. Female voices from high sopranos to low altos are welcome, along with players (either gender) of  viols, plucked strings, and one or two organists. Pitch A=440

 

 

 

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