Church Street Wiveliscombe Taunton Somerset TA4 2LR
Music will include Adriano Banchieri’s rarely performed Festino nella sera di Giovedì Grasso avanti Cena of 1608. A Bolognese priest, Banchieri wrote several “madrigal cycles”, works of up to 20 individual madrigals telling a single story, including this depiction of an evening’s entertainment before dinner at carnival time. A series of groups including match sellers, bakers, and revellers in animal masks invade the party to entertain and amuse.
Other works include onomatopoeic madrigals by Claude Janequin – La Guerre depicts the 1515 battle of Marignan, where combined French and Venetian forces defeated the Swiss confederates.
We will follow this with related genres from 17th century France and England: elegant airs de cours by Pierre Guedron and delightful Elizabethan lute songs by John Dowland.
We then move to more modern music still inspired by the past – Claude Debussy’s Trois chansons de Charles D’Orleans, setting the words written by the 15th Century French Duke Charles D’Orleans while a prisoner of war in England, and English master Ralph Vaughan William’s Three Shakespeare Songs.
Come join us as we explore beautiful music written for the voice – music designed to tell stories and delight the senses.