In mid-September, Laurie and David Lefeber, CD producer and film-maker, took a lightning trip to Florence to make a short documentary about the manuscript sourced for the CD and concert project, From Darkness Into Light. The resulting film was shown at the CD launch concert at the Brighton Early Music Festival. Since the concert tour will … Read more
We are delighted that Laurie’s book, Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara has been selected for the 2019 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society, which is for a “musicological book of exceptional merit published during the previous year by a scholar who is past the early stages of his or her career.” This is one … Read more
We are getting ready for the big reveal! Next Friday, 25 October 2019, our audience in Brighton will finally be able to hear the Antoine Brumel’s Lamentations of Jeremiah for Good Friday in their glorious entirety: forty-five minutes of searingly beautiful, heart-breaking polyphony. We will also be performing music from the Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript (pictured here), … Read more
It’s like having a new toy that we want everyone to play with! Our new choirbook stand got its first outing at the Friends of Cambridge Early Music workshop, Sisters of Ferrara, on the weekend of 13-15 September. Using some Sibelius-generated scores we sang chant and polyphony from parts, learning all the time about how … Read more
When we were first thinking about how we wanted to bring Brumel’s Lamentations to audiences in performance, we knew that it would be hard to do the work justice in a stand-and-deliver concert – it feels far too contextually rich for that approach. We also wanted to express some of the wonder we feel when we … Read more
As we get closer to the release date of From Darkness Into Light, we want to share an essay written by Laurie to accompany the liner notes to the CD. There are only so many words a CD booklet can contain, but we felt there might be some listeners who wanted to know more, or who … Read more
Fourteen intrepid singers from the USA, Canada, UK, and mainland Europe made their way up the mountain on the first Sunday of July to join Deborah and Laurie in the medieval mountain town of Triora, high in the Argentine mountains above the Italian Riviera. Despite delays caused by thunderstorms and a stray suitcase, we managed … Read more
It’s been whirlwind getting this recording together, from finding the music to booking the recording dates and trying to find time to do that thing – rehearse! – but we did it, and we could not be happier about the result. The disc pairs Brumel’s Lamentations for Good Friday, discovered by Laurie in their forty-five-minute-complete … Read more
Our new choirbook stand is a thing of beauty and ingenuity. Put together from components purchased from eBay, an antiques market, Ikea, and the local hardware store, it is now ready to hold music in choirbook format, large enough for the whole ensemble to read from in performance. It has been an ambition for us for … Read more
What a thrilling week! Monday, we met at the beautiful Tudor church of St Michael the Archangel in Southampton to rehearse some beautiful new repertoire, which we will be recording at St Michael’s in May this year. This includes a major new discovery, which Laurie unearthed when we were recently in Florence, and which we … Read more
We would like to invite you to join us this summer in the extraordinary medieval town of Triora, high up in the Ligurian mountains, for a week of convent polyphony. From 7-14 July, we will be singing, eating, and laughing together, and we’d love to have you there, too. More information on this page, where … Read more
Laurie’s book, Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara is named in the 2019 finalists’ list for the Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE awards) for books of extraordinary merit that make a significant contribution to a field of study. We are delighted that women’s music – particularly women’s polyphony – is finally getting recognition!
Before the Christmas season gets underway, we thought we’d round up our autumn news and give you a few reminders about what’s coming up in 2019. September’s big news was the long-awaited release of Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara. The book tells the story of Ferrarese music in a new way, by putting women … Read more
We are so sad this evening to hear the news of Tony Newcomb’s passing. His book, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579-1597, was our go-to reference for many years and the inspiration for the projects that led to recordings, concerts, and research of our own. His meticulous readings of documents, his insightful analysis that only could come … Read more
Musica Secreta has, over the past few decades, done concerts in England, Ireland, Germany, France, Croatia, in cathedrals, decommissioned churches, hotel restaurants, and once memorably in a tent in a field. But we have never performed in Italy before, so Wednesday night was a wonderful first for us. Thanks to an enterprising invitation from Linda … Read more
