First performance in 1,000 years: ‘lost’ songs from the Middle Ages are brought back to life.
An ancient song repertory will be heard for the first time in 1,000 years this week after being ‘reconstructed’ by a Cambridge researcher and a world-class performer of medieval music.
Now, after more than two decades of painstaking work on identifying the techniques used to set particular verse forms, research undertaken by Cambridge University’s Dr Sam Barrett has enabled him to reconstruct melodies from the rediscovered leaf of the 11th century ‘Cambridge Songs’.
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-performance-in-1000-years-lost-songs-from-the-middle-ages-are-brought-back-to-life-0
After piecing together an estimated 80-90 per cent of what can be known about the melodies for The Consolation of Philosophy, Barrett enlisted the help of Benjamin Bagby of Sequentia – a three-piece group of experienced performers who have built up their own working memory of medieval song.
Performed by: Benjamin Bagby, Hanna Marti and Norbert Rodenkirchen, known as Sequentia (http://www.sequentia.org/)
