Free Concert - Illustrious Women, Fortunate and Unfortunate
Schedule
Sun, 15 Dec, 2024 at 07:30 pm
UTC-05:00Location
Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, MA | Cambridge, MA
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Tactus Ensemble Cambridge, under the direction of Hugh Hinton, will perform a free concert of Renaissance a cappella vocal music entitled “Illustrious Women, Fortunate and Unfortunate” on Sunday December 15, 2024, at 7.30 pm at St Peter’s Episcopal Church, 838 Mass Ave. in Cambridge.The program foregrounds three female figures who in different ways exemplify Early Modern conceptions of female authority: Dido Queen of Carthage, the Virgin Mary, and the ‘Shulamite’ addressee of the Song of Songs. The Spanish composer Francisco Guerrero sets the four major Marian antiphons that together delineate the liturgical year. Guerrero’s lucid polyphonic settings of the early mediæval rhyming texts brings to life the Virgin Mary’s role as compassionate intercessor for suffering humanity. Franco-Flemish composer Ioannes Ockeghem’s offers a dramatic six-part setting of a classicizing hexameter meditation on Mary’s role in gaining entrée for the faithful to the heavenly banquet. Two other Franco-Flemish composers set quotations from Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid, which has been called the “tragedy of Dido”: Josquin des Prez sets the famous characterization of “Fama” (“Rumor”), while Adrian Willært dramatizes the Carthaginian queen’s tragic but defiant farewell. And early English Renaissance composer John Dunstable brings out the passionate but enigmatic address of a text from the Song of Solomon with long lines of melismatic polyphony.
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Where is it happening?
Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, MA, 838 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139-3004, United States,Cambridge, MassachusettsEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
