One of the cornerstones of the Galway cultural season, The Galway Early Music Festival – “Musica et Scientia”, May 27-29, is live and hybrid in 2022 with a dazzling programme featuring music and the stars, the harmony of the planets in their orbits, the music of mathematics and geometry, music in art, and the music at the heart of the Universe.
“We think of music as separate from science, but in the medieval period and right up to the Baroque period, music was science – one of the four pillars of ‘scientia’ or ‘knowledge’, together with mathematics, geometry and astronomy!” says festival director Maura Ó Cróinín.
“Music was seen as part of all creation – the planets sing in their orbits, our own bodies sing physically and spiritually. Early composers and musicians strove to express the music of the universe with voice and instrument, and, as modern concert goers, recognising this can give us a new and rich way of listening to their music.”
Listen to beautiful music while being immersed in starscapes or in Renaissance art, take a trip from the Middle East to Europe and on to the Americas following the movement of scientific and musical ideas, take part in a discussion on the relationship between music and the dark sky movement, learn about the early Irish harp and much more.
Enjoy performances from some of the stars of the early music firmament: The Orlando Consort, Resurgam Chamber Choir and the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, Teddie Hwang (baroque flute and astral photographer ), Wolodymyr Smishkewych and friends, the Alphabet Baroque Club, and Siobhán Armstrong, in performances that span 800 years of music.
See the full programme and book live or online tickets at www.galwayearlymusic.com Check out the special Festival Tickets, and the Friday Bundle. Tickets will also be available at the door.
HIGHLIGHTS:
LISTENING TO PICTURES
The Orlando Consort — Sat. May 28, 7:30pm, St Nicholas Collegiate Church
A visual and aural feast featuring some of the greatest painters and composers of the Renaissance. This multimedia production vividly reveals how Renaissance art is full of sound. A professionally created visual sequence on a 16ft screen brings the viewer close to stunning works of art, offering a privileged view that re-creates the experience of encountering them in their original historic Italian setting.
Full images dissolve into spectacular close-ups, all to the accompaniment of glorious music from the same era and chosen by the Consort for the specific connections to the paintings on view.
DISCOVERING LIGHT
Teddie Hwang (baroque flute and astral photographer ), Yonit Kosovske (harpsichord )Friday, May 27, 9pm, St Nicholas Collegiate Church
Baroque flutist Teddie Hwang and harpsichordist Yonit Kosovske invite listeners into a space of contemplation in our starry cosmos, accompanied by Teddie's nightscape images especially curated for this programme on a 6ft screen. Teddie weaves her night sky experiences into the narrative of the music such as the incomparable Sonata in B-minor for flute and obligato harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as other brilliant compositions written for this instrumentation.
Contemplative pieces such as Jean-Philippe Rameau's "Dialogue of the Muses" and Jean-Henri d'Anglebert's "Tombeau de Monsieur de Chambonnières" pave the way from our earthly world to the divine and offer moments of solace. Enjoy this journey of discovering light in our timeless universe.
OVER THE ALPS
Resurgam Chamber Choir, English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, Malcolm Proud (harpsichord ), Siobhán Armstrong (baroque harp ) Sunday, May 29, 5pm, St Nicholas Collegiate Church
In his lifetime, Rosenmüller was considered one of Europe’s greatest and most well-travelled musicians, and a key figure in bringing Italian musical ideas to Germany. Thus his music looks both ways across the Alps: grandiloquent Venetian splendour meeting Teutonic contrapuntal discipline. Resurgam brings the colourful and virtuosic beauty of his concerted vocal music to Ireland for the first time, with a collation of Latin psalm-concerti, each a mini-cantata.
The splendidly sonorous C minor Magnificat in eight parts caps a Vespers setting in the grand Venetian style. Sean Doherty’s new work, setting an ancient Vesper hymn, forms a contrast in the centre of the programme.In partnership with Music for Galway and Galway 2020
FROM CHAOS TO LAWES
Alphabet Baroque Club with guests Ruth Cunningham (of Anonymous 4 ) and Ingrid Nicola (of Contemp String Quartet ). Saturday, May 28, 4pm, St Nicholas Collegiate Church
The Alphabet Baroque Club will explore the relationship of music to the sciences and liberal arts of earlier times, from the musings of Hildegarde von Bingen on wisdom, through Jean-Féry Rebel’s clever depiction of the creation (beginning with Chaos, which is then separated and refined into the four elements ), to a piece originally written for Anonymous 4 by 21st century composer Richard Einhorn on a text of Galileo.
In between, we visit some of Machaut’s rhythmic puzzles, pay tribute to the muses of astronomy and music in two viol consort pieces by Michael East, and present one of the Fantasia suites of William Lawes, who in spite of his name broke many of the rules of composition. We will also examine the state of medical science in the 18th century with Marin Marais’s delightfully macabre musical picture of a bladder stone surgery, “L’Operation de la Taille”.
VOYAGES WITH AN ASTROLABE
Maria Ryan (fiddle, vielle ), Ciara Taaffe (harps ), Wolodymyr Smishkewych (voice, sinfonie, percussion ), Steven Player (guitars, gittern ). Friday, May 27 7pm, St Nicholas Collegiate Church
From the sun’s dawning in the east, to the far west of the lands of Altramar, journey with us to explore the marriage of science, mysticism, travel, and poetry through music, in Voyages with an Astrolabe.
Take a journey of exploration sailing the seas and rivers of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and finally across the Atlantic to the Americas. It is especially appropriate that we should take this voyage in Galway, at the gateway of Western Ireland, where a large majority of Spanish and Portuguese astrolabes have been recovered from shipwrecks.
Our travels will take us from paths along the Silk Road, across the steppes of Ukraine and along the Black Sea through the Bosporus. Then, across the Mediterranean we sail, until we reach the Iberian Peninsula and the northern shores of Africa before we launch across the Atlantic Ocean to find out how the traditional dances of Africa became encapsulated in the dance collections of Spanish colonisers. We will hear the songs and dances of Oswald von Wolkenstein and Dmitri Cantemir, two musician-diplomats who travelled far and wide and described their travels (and sometimes, their wild high-jinks ) in very musical terms.
Galway Early Music Caherfurvaus, Craughwell, Co Galway
For details, contact 083 461 9039, email [email protected] and see www.galwayearlymusic.com
