Sequentia concert: 22 January 2014

sequentia hildegard celestial hierarchy

Wednesday evening, 22 January 2014 at 8:00 pm
Pre-concert chat with host Matthew White at 7:15 pm
PLEASE NOTE VENUE: Holy Rosary Cathedral, 646 Richards at Dunsmuir, downtown Vancouver
[directions]

Early Music Vancouver

presents

Sequentia:
Mystical Voices of Mediæval Germany
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179): Celestial Hierarchy

SEQUENTIA ENSEMBLE FOR MEDIÆVAL MUSIC:

Benjamin Bagby director, harp
Norbert Rodenkirchen flutes & harp

SEQUENTIA WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE:

Agnethe Christensen, Lydia Heather Knutson, Esther Labourdette, Sabine Lutzenberger, Christine Mothes, Elodie Mourot, Lena Susanne Norin

In the World Premiere of this new progamme, Sequentia presents a selection of the most innovative and expressive vocal music of the High Middle Ages in Germany, featuring masterpieces of the 12th-century Benedictine visionary and composer Hildegard von Bingen.

Full details—ticket prices and ordering information, programme, programme notes, musicians’ biographies—at Early Music Vancouver.

Benjamin Bagby: 21 January 2014

nrf-hildegardGreen College Society Series: Interdisciplinarity in Action

Guest speaker: BENJAMIN BAGBY (Ensemble Sequentia, Paris)

“Hildegard von Bingen and the German Mystical Tradition in Medieval Music”

Coach House, Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC
Tuesday, January 21, 5-6:30 pm, reception to follow, all welcome

Benjamin Bagby, leading medieval scholar and internationally recognized performer, discusses the creation of Ensemble Sequentia‘s newest program featuring masterpieces of the Benedictine visionary and composer Hildegard von Bingen (12th century) in the wider context of the German mystical tradition.

Hildegard von Bingen was many things – a mediæval Benedictine abbess and mystic from the Rhineland, recently made a saint and doctor ecclesiæ; a renowned healer and natural scientist; a passionate witness to the power of divinity as manifested in countless visions of extraordinary vividness; a modern ‘new-age’ and feminist icon who inspired countless books, performances, and even a recent German film; a woman of noble birth and immense courage, who was not intimidated by the male hierarchy of the 12th century church, who fought for the rights of her convent, and corresponded freely with prelates, kings, queens and emperors. But most surprisingly, this unique mediæval personality is known as a brilliant Latin poet and musician, the creator of over 75 virtuosic spiritual songs of astonishing originality and beauty as well as the earliest surviving music-drama written by a known composer.

Vocalist, harper and mediævalist Benjamin Bagby has been an important figure in the field of mediæval musical performance for over 30 years. Born near Chicago, he studied at Oberlin Conservatory and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where Sequentia was founded in 1977. Since then he has been devoted to the research, performance and recording work of Sequentia. Benjamin is also deeply involved with the solo performance of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic oral poetry; his acclaimed performance of the Beowulf epic continues to be heard worldwide and was released as a DVD in 2007. In 2010 he received the Howard Mayer Brown Lifetime Achievement Award from Early Music America. In addition to researching and creating over 70 programmes for Sequentia, Benjamin has published widely, writing about mediæval performance practice; as a guest lecturer and professor, he has taught courses and workshops all over Europe and North America. Since 2005 he is an associate professor at the Sorbonne, University of Paris, where he teaches mediæval music performance practice.

See also:

sequentia hildegard celestial hierarchy

The final CD of Sequentia’s Hildegard von Bingen complete works project was recorded for SONY in November 2012, and released in 2013 as a single CD, to be followed by the complete works box set at a later date. The completion of this enormous project, begun by Sequentia in 1982, represents the culmination of the life’s work of the late Barbara Thornton and also celebrates Hildegard’s elevation to sainthood and magistra ecclesiae in 2012. A multi-generational ensemble of women’s voices plus the flautist Norbert Rodenkirchen was united under the direction of Benjamin Bagby for this unique recording.

CFP Extended Deadline! 42nd UBC Medieval Workshop: Medieval and Renaissance Oecologies

OecologiesDownload the call for papers (CFP)

Call for Papers *extended deadline*: 1 February 2014

Workshop dates: 7-9 November 2014

The Œcologies Project, along with the Committee for Medieval Studies at the University of British Columbia, solicits contributors for the 42nd annual UBC workshop, to be held from 7-9 November 2014 at Green College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Medieval and Renaissance Œcologies seeks to interrogate premodern understandings of the natural world and ecological thinking. A prevailing attitude within modern Western culture has imagined the natural world as “out there,” a distinct realm upon which humans import subjective meaning. More recently, ecocritics and theorists of the new materialism(s) have challenged this conception of nature. This workshop takes up these challenges by investigating the idea of “œcology,” an older and defamiliarizing spelling of the modern concept “ecology.” The spelling is retained in an effort to rethink “ecology” through the study of premodern natural history, taxonomy, hierarchy, and categorization, and to ask what conceptual or metaphorical resources might help us – as located moderns – reorient our perceptions about the premodern past and our present and future moments. In an effort to define complex terms such as “environment,” “landscape,” and “ecology,” we ask where do these terms come from? What came before them? What do they mean here and now? What did conceptions of Nature and “œcology” look like in the Medieval and Renaissance periods and how did different discourse communities define their meanings?

We welcome papers from any discipline, and especially encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Please send paper proposals, questions, and / or expressions of interest to:

Vin Nardizzi or Robert Rouse by 1 February 2014.

This conference is part of the ongoing multi-year research project Œcologies (oecologies.com), supported by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University.

Early Music Vancouver: some concerts in early 2014

hildegard vision

Some further details follow below; for more, see each individual link; for more Early Music Vancouver concerts, see their main calendar of events. Continue reading Early Music Vancouver: some concerts in early 2014

video: “Rollant et Renart”

The video and programme handout, with thanks to the perfomers for giving permission to post the former, and to Chantal Phan for the latter. When watching the video, it is recommended that the viewer skip to around the 3 minute mark to get straight to the performance itself and thus avoid and evade the unnecessary clownish introduction.*

[wpvideo REhsdYWj]

Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 5.25.32 PM

“ROLLANT AND RENART”
A musical performance of Medieval French narrative texts

Wednesday, November 27, from 12:00 to 12:50
Meekison Arts Student Space, room D-140 — main floor of Buchanan Building wing D.
12:00 noon
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In the Middle Ages, almost all narratives were sung. To experiment with this lively approach to literature and to the Old French language, Chantal Phan’s FREN 407 class, students from the School of Music, and medieval vielle specialist Pat Unruh will perform excerpts from the 11th-c. SONG OF ROLAND (epic poem) and the 12th-13th-c. ROMANCE OF RENART (a satirical animal narrative). The performance will also include other repertoire: French two and three-part motets, a Gregorian lament, and an instrumental dance. Instruments: bowed vielle, organetto, recorders and percussion.

Commentary in English, and English translations of all sung passages provided on the handout.

Performers: Maegen Andolfatto, Kevin Dickie, John Inglis, Colin Jones (soloist), Line Lavoie, Maria Marion, Chantal Phan, Angelique Po, Jennine Punzalan, Chloe Sargent, Pat Unruh.

Conception and musical arrangements: Chantal Phan, Pat Unruh

Camcorder operator: Dorian Simonneaux

Poster (attached): Jennine Punzalan

info: chantal.phan@ubc.ca

* O’Brien apologizes for her clownishness, poor posture, and the unfortunate presence of “grading-gut” from excessive time spent sitting down slouching over work. Occupational hazard combined with insufficient exercise of late. To be remedied by running with deer in the woods etc. We apologise for the unintended contributions from a drinks vending-machine’s automated cooling apparatus; complaints should be addressed to whichever part of UBC is responsible for dealing with Coca-Cola™.

CFP: 42nd UBC Medieval Workshop

The next Medieval Workshop: Medieval and Renaissance Oecologies

OecologiesDownload the call for papers (CFP)

Call for papers (CFP) deadline: 1 February 2014

Workshop dates: 7-9 November 2014

The Œcologies Project, along with the Committee for Medieval Studies at the University of British Columbia, solicits contributors for the 42nd annual UBC workshop, to be held from 7-9 November 2014 at Green College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Medieval and Renaissance Œcologies seeks to interrogate premodern understandings of the natural world and ecological thinking. A prevailing attitude within modern Western culture has imagined the natural world as “out there,” a distinct realm upon which humans import subjective meaning. More recently, ecocritics and theorists of the new materialism(s) have challenged this conception of nature. This workshop takes up these challenges by investigating the idea of “œcology,” an older and defamiliarizing spelling of the modern concept “ecology.” The spelling is retained in an effort to rethink “ecology” through the study of premodern natural history, taxonomy, hierarchy, and categorization, and to ask what conceptual or metaphorical resources might help us – as located moderns – reorient our perceptions about the premodern past and our present and future moments. In an effort to define complex terms such as “environment,” “landscape,” and “ecology,” we ask where do these terms come from? What came before them? What do they mean here and now? What did conceptions of Nature and “œcology” look like in the Medieval and Renaissance periods and how did different discourse communities define their meanings?

We welcome papers from any discipline, and especially encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Please send paper proposals, questions, and / or expressions of interest to: Vin Nardizzi or Robert Rouse by 1 February 2014.

œcologies
Oecologies: Inhabiting Premodern Worlds
is a research cluster that gathers scholars from the humanities living and working along the North American Pacific coast to investigate the idea of “oecology,” an older spelling of the modern concept “ecology.” We retain this defamiliarizing spelling because our research asks how we might rethink “ecology” through the study of premodern natural history, taxonomy, hierarchy, and categorization. By exploring an array of discourses about “oecology,” our research asks what conceptual or metaphorical resources might help us – as located moderns – reorient our perceptions about the premodern past and our present and future moments. Among other matters, our research will discuss the relations among terms such as N/nature, landscape, ecology, economy, environment, and technology, and will ask how our regionally and temporally specific conceptions draw / differ from premodern inhabitations of the world.

Principal Collaborators

Vin Nardizzi (Associate Professor, English, University of British Columbia) teaches Renaissance literature, ecocriticism, and queer and disability studies.

Tiffany Werth (Associate Professor, English, Simon Fraser University) teaches the English Reformations, romance in all its forms, and is currently researching early modern habits of taxonomy and all things mineral.

Patricia Badir (Professor, English, University of British Columbia) teaches Renaissance literature, and is currently working on playmaking and the perils of mimesis on Shakespeare’s stage.

Robert Rouse (Associate Professor, English, University of British Columbia) teaches Medieval literature. His research has been primarily concerned with medieval romance and culture.

Reminder: “Rollant et Renart” – performance of Old French narrative: 27 November 2013

HERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR FRENCH LITERATURE AS YOU PROBABLY HAVE NEVER HEARD IT BEFORE:

Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 5.25.32 PM

The UBC Early Romance Studies Research Cluster is happy to present:

‘ROLLANT AND RENART”
A musical performance of Medieval French narrative texts

Wednesday, November 27, from 12:00 to 12:50 (take a break at the end of term!),
Meekison Arts Student Space, room D-140 — main floor of Buchanan Building wing D.
The performance will start precisely at 12:00.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In the Middle Ages, almost all narratives were sung. To experiment with this lively approach to literature and to the Old French language, Chantal Phan’s FREN 407 class, students from the School of Music, and medieval vielle specialist Pat Unruh will perform excerpts from the 11th-c. SONG OF ROLAND (epic poem) and the 12th-13th-c.  ROMANCE OF RENART (a satirical animal narrative). The performance will also include other repertoire: French two and three-part motets, a Gregorian lament, and an instrumental dance. Instruments: bowed vielle, organetto, recorders and percussion.

**During this concert, all commentary will be in English, and English translations of all sung passages will be provided.

Performers: Maegen Andolfatto, Kevin Dickie, John Inglis, Colin Jones (soloist), Line Lavoie, Maria Marion, Chantal Phan, Angelique Po, Jennine Punzalan, Chloe Sargent, Pat Unruh.

Conception and musical arrangements: Chantal Phan, Pat Unruh

Poster (attached): Jennine Punzalan

EVERYONE IS  WELCOME!

info: chantal.phan@ubc.ca

UPDATE & REMINDER: UBC Medieval Workshop (7-9 November)

The registration form is now available, and interested parties are encouraged to register as soon as possible (by 3 November would help enormously if they wish to partake of food). The registration form (.doc) is here.

Message from the organizers:

The 41st medieval workshop starts in exactly one week. For planning purposes, we need to know the number of people coming to the lunches and the dinner, information that we’ll glean from the registration forms. Not many of you have registered yet, and therefore I am sending out this friendly reminder: please register soon!

More about the UBC Medieval Workshop:

J. Allan Mitchell: 23 October 2013

New post on Oecologies

Today! J. Allan Mitchell, “Household Habitats and the Medieval Ecological Imaginary,” Oecologies Speaker Series at Green College

Please join us for the inaugural talk of the Oecologies Speaker Series at Green College at UBC!

Dr. J. Allan Mitchell
(English, University of Victoria)

“Household Habitats and the Medieval Ecological Imaginary”

5-6:30pm, Wed Oct 23, Coach House, Green College, UBC

Abstract: Medieval English household texts reveal the extent to which complicated ecologies underpin even the tidiest economies. Gestation and growth in particular expose the human to the vast universe, showing that persons become fleshed out in impersonal modes less anthropocentric than commonly assumed. Our sense that human creatures are entangled in dense material networks has been reinvigorated by recent theory. What is needed is a longer historical perspective. Recovering early notions of animacy, infancy, virtuality, and maturity, Mitchell traces the inheritance of modern speculative and scientific concepts too often considered in isolation from the past.

Speaker Info: J. Allan Mitchell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria. He has written on medieval rhetoric, practical ethics, and human ecologies, and is the author of Becoming Human: An Essay on the Matter of the Child in the Later Middle Ages (forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in 2014). His other books are Ethics and Eventfulness in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower (D.S. Brewer, 2004).

Oecologies: Inhabiting Premodern Worlds is a new Speaker Series sponsored by Green College that gathers scholars from the humanities living and working along the North American Pacific coast to investigate the idea of “oecology,” an older spelling of the modern concept “ecology.” For event details, abstracts, and speaker information, please visit oecologies.com or view the event poster. Also follow us on Twitter (@Oecologies) and “Like” us on Facebook! Oecologies also holds a reading group in advance of each talk in the Speaker Series. If you are interested in attending future sessions, please contact Dr. Robert Rouse. If you have other questions about Oecologies, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Vin Nardizzi or the project assistant, Carmel Ohman.

Performing Old French narrative: 27 November 2013

Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 5.25.32 PM27 November 2013
12:00 noon, MEEKISON ARTS STUDENT SPACE (Buchanan D-140)
Student performances of Old French narrative
—ERS / Chantal Phan’s FREN 407A class

“ROLLANT and RENART”

A musical performance of Medieval French narratives (with English commentary and translation), featuring STUDENTS FROM  FRENCH 407 AND FROM THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Program:

1.  ‘Roland at Roncevaux’ (from the 11th-c. Song of Roland);

Two passages from the oldest epic in the French language, that tells the dark story of a battle during which pride and treason lead to disaster.

2. ‘The Crow and the Fox’ (from the Romance of Renart, 12th-13th c.)

In this excerpt from a humorous satire of human society, a sneaky fox fools a conceited crow, but then is caught at his own game.

Interpolated music:
Two polyphonic French motets (13th c.), a Gregorian lament, an instrumental estampie.

Singers/chanters/narrators:
Maegan Andolfatto, Kevin Dickie, John Inglis, Colin Jones (soloist), Line Lavoie, Maria Marion, Chantal Phan, Angelique Po, Jennine Punzalan, Chloe Sargent.

Instrumentalists:
Line Lavoie (percussion), Chantal Phan (organetto), Angelique Po (recorder), Pat Unruh (bowed vielle).

Conception and arrangements:
Chantal Phan, Pat Unruh

At the MEEKISON ARTS STUDENT SPACE (Buchanan Building, 1866 Main Mall,
room D-140),

NOVEMBER 27, 2013, from 12:00 noon to 12:50.

EVERYONE IS WELCOME!

Info: chantal.phan@ubc.ca

Poster in French (PDF)

Poster in English (PDF)

If you’re interested in this general area, do also take a look at:

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