12th Century Western Renaissance Music By Hildegard Von Bingen And Jaufre Rudel To Be Performed By Folger Consort At Folger Shakespeare Library

The superb Folger Consort, based at Washington, D.C.'s prized Folger Shakespeare Library, will be performing 12th Century Western Renaissance Music by visionary early German humanist, poetess, and composer Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) and outstanding early French troubadour Jaufre Rudel (c.1125-c.1147) this Friday, Saturday (two shows), and Sunday, in their replica of an Elizabethan London Theater, with guest soloists soprano Johana Arnold, baritone Richard Lalli, and instrumentalist Margriet Tindemans.

Hildegard von Bingen has been an important figure in the revival of Western musical, humanistic, and feminist studies over the past generation, and her poetic and musical works have been widely performed and recorded, and even widely "sampled" by electronica and computer musicians and composers around the world.

Jaufre Rudel, while less well known at present, was the author of the poem "La Vida breve" [The Brief Life], which has become the basis for Finnish Woman Composer Kaija Saariaho's and French-Lebanese Librettist Amin Maloof's prize-winning new opera "L'amour de loin" [Love From Afar], which is now available on DVD in a stunning Finnish National Opera production, starring American soprano Dawn Upshaw, Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, and Dutch mezzo-soprano Monica Groop; all directed by Peter Sellars and with a stunning high-tech set designed by Russian-American architect and designer George Tsypin, whose award-winning production of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, the Kirov Opera, under Valery Gergiev, will be bringing to the Metropolitan Opera House in July 2007, for two complete showings.

According to The Folger Shakespeare Library's Web-site:

"The flowering of art and learning during the 12th century was so remarkable that scholars often refer to the period as the 12th-century Renaissance. An intense desire to add new songs and words to the liturgy of the Church is the background for the singular life and works of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), the visionary abbess, poet, composer, and advisor to popes and emperors. At the same time in southern France, the troubadours were defining the forms and conventions of love songs that were to influence all later composers. In this program the Consort contrasts the soaring mystical sacred song/poems of Hildegard with the achingly beautiful songs of unrequited love from afar by one of the greatest of the troubadours--Jaufre Rudel (c.1125-c.1147)."

Please see: www.folger.edu/woSummary.cfm?wotypeid=3&season=c&woid=216








Renaissance Poet and Composer Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179).

For a facsimile image of one of her compositions, please see:

http://www.reichertverlag.de/389500037xc.jpg

Please also see www.tripoli-city.org/amour/synopsis.html for copyrighted French National Library 13th Century Western Renaissance minature of Jaufre Rudel (c.1125-c.1147).

Image credit: www.germanembassy-india.org With thanks.