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New this season: Preferred seating for Season OR Partial subscriptions,
PLUS super-low student prices! Visit the tickets page.
We hope you’ll join us for our next concert:
Womansong: Medieval Pilgrimage
including special guests
Annette Bauer, recorders
Therese Honey, harp
8pm, Saturday, February 20, 2010
St. Mary Cathedral,
203 East 10th St., Austin
Admission $20; $15 seniors; $5 students (at the door only)
Tickets available by cash or check at the door
or online
Call 512-377-6961 to make reservations.
Many thousands of people from around the world make modern day
pilgrimages to various religious or political sites. However, there
was never a more popular time for religious pilgrimage than during the
Middle Ages. In those times, people made long and dangerous trips,
lasting months or years, in a search for spiritual meaning or
fulfillment or as an act of penance.
Several of the most important sites of pilgrimage during the Middle
Ages were located in what is now northern Spain. The monastery at
Montserrat in Catalonia (a shrine to the Virgin Mary) and the Santiago
de Compostela in Galicia (a shrine to the apostle St. James the Great)
attracted pilgrims from all over Europe. Stories and songs by and
about the pilgrims, as well as the liturgical and para-liturgical
music at the shrines became celebrated in literature and music.
We are fortunate that we have access to much of the music from both of
these important sites, as well as related music from the Cistercian
convent in Burgos and also from Las Cantigas de Santa Maria from the
royal court of Alfonso X. Much of the music from the Lliber vermell
from Montserrat was intended to be sung by the pilgrims themselves, in
their nightly celebrations, and included chants, rounds, folk songs,
circle dances, and some bits of polyphony as well. The music from the
Codex Calixtinus at Santiago de Compostela was performed in church
services, and contains meditative chants as well as lively and
spirited motets and dance-like “call and respond” pieces.
It is fitting for TEMP’s performance of this beautiful and mesmerizing
music to be held in the glorious acoustic at St. Mary Cathedral,
similar in size and resonance to those of the first performances 700
years ago. This performance is also a part of our “Womansong” series,
celebrating the richly transparent timbre of treble voices, whether in
unison or in polyphonic settings, which makes the most of sweet
consonances and pungent dissonances. Much of this music was
intentionally scored for higher voices, such as works from the convent
in Burgos, which were written for the nuns to perform, and many of the
Marian pieces from the Llibre vermell. Among the ten women singing in
the concert will be featured soloists Kathlene Ritch, Stephanie
Prewitt, and Jenifer Thyssen, and the small medieval orchestra will
feature guest harpist Therese Honey and German recorder player,
Annette Bauer, who has been featured most recently in TEMP’s Sephardic
concerts.
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