This is a past event
The Aberdeen Early Music Collective sing late Medieval songs and play dances from across Europe, performed as a reconstruction of a musical entertainment in the circle of Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514).
The Aberdeen Early Music Collective welcomes noted guest performers Marc Lewon and Uri Smilansky on a variety of medieval instruments, along with regular performers Frauke Jürgensen, Caroline Ritchie, and Ralph Stelzenmüller. Today, we focus on the late middle ages, reconstructing a musical entertainment in the circle of the Nuremberg humanist, Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514). This project developed from Frauke’s research into the performance practice of the Buxheim Organ Book. Today’s programme, in addition to local German songs, includes many pieces by famous medieval French and English song-writers. In keeping with the practice of the period, we are not so concerned with questions of the composers’ intentions, but rather with what these pieces might have sounded like, interpreted in the Nuremberg of Schedel’s time.
Schedel is most well-known for his lavishly illustrated “Nuremberg Chronicle”, a world history, which was one of the first printed books combining text and illustrations. He also left behind a music manuscript of special interest, the Schedel Songbook. Although riddled with errors (he doesn’t appear to have been a particularly competent musician), it provides a valuable catalogue of music from across Europe, combining many of the biggest hits with many songs known to us only from this one source. The Buxheim Organ Book is the largest, most important keyboard manuscript of the 15th century, and shares many pieces in common with the Schedel Songbook. Its comparatively precise tablature notation provides valuable clues to performance practice—and it helps us make sense of some of the odder situations encountered in the sloppily-notated Schedel Songbook.
- Venue
- King's College Chapel
- Contact
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For more information and booking tickets, contact
Euan Crabb
Administrator of Music
email: escrabb@abdn.ac.uk
01224 272570