Renaissance and Tudor Programmes

The Cradle of the Renaissance
Italian music from the time of Leonardo da Vinci

"This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts, which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, the singing of ancient songs to the Orphic lyre, and all this in Florence..." So wrote the Florentine Marsilio Ficino in 1492, and even now the names of Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and countless of their contemporaries have become bywords for artistic and scientific achievement, while the names of the cities they lived in - Florence, Ferrara, Mantua, Venice, Naples - still conjure up images of unsurpassed artistic glory.

Italian musicians uniquely looked to classical antiquity for inspiration, regarding music as a spontaneous refinement of poetry and rhetoric. It is because this music was improvised that the great written music in the manuscripts from this golden age is all by foreigners. Sirinu perform music form both the written and unwritten traditions, including some of the earliest instrumental music, Carnival songs and even contemporary folk music that still echoes renaissance styles.

The Road to Toledo

The Road to Toledo is a musical journey across all of Europe in the entourage of Archduke Philip the Fair of Burgundy, who in November 1501 left Brussels for Spain on a trip that was to last over two years. A cast of over 500 fellow travellers include Philip's chapel choir, many other musicians and notably the court chronicler, Antoine de Lalaing. Sirinu follow the progress of the party through France and Spain, performing music from a manuscript specifically associated with Philip's visit together with traditional regional musics. All these are bound together by extracts from Lalaing's occasionally salacious narrative into a panorama of medieval Europe and a glimpse of the working lives of the travelling singers and players.

Song of the Sirens

Sirinu boldly sail into uncharted waters with a programme inspired by the legend of the Sirens, mythical whisperers of enchantment and danger. Song of the Sirens brings together music from the earliest times to the present day, alongside uncannily parallel contemporary traditions from around the world, all linked by the legend of these inspirational but treacherous beings. Some of the medieval music contains the seeds of developments that its composers could never have dreamed of and this ancient soundworld is put to radical new uses in a number of contemporary commissions written especially for Sirinu, where the composers respond to the peculiar constraints and sounds of old instruments to evolve a new music that is both inspired by the past and practically shaped by it. An enchanting and magical tour-de-force of versatility and imagination.

All Goodly Sports -
the Music of Henry VIII

Deeply in love with his Spanish bride Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's court resounded with his own compositions and music by visiting composers.  This programme evokes that spirit of gaiety, and includes music from the court of Catherine's father Ferdinand, plus traditional dance and seasonal music. Sirinu have recorded the complete works of Henry VIII for Chandos titled 'All Goodly Sports'.

When the King Enjoys His Own Again
Music for the Civil War

A programme of music from the time of the Civil War including pieces known and played by Cromwell’s musical family, and dances from the newly commercialised popular publications of John Playford. We feature pieces by Henry Lawes, favoured by Cromwell’s Latin Secretary John Milton, and by Henry’s brother William, a Royalist and the Master of the King’s Music. William died at the Siege of Chester in 1643. Popular ballads gauge the sentiment of the moment with tales of Puritan lechery and jubilation at the new King’s return.

Drake's Progress
The musical encounters of an Elizabethan adventurer

Sir Francis Drake, explorer, pirate and national hero, completed his famous voyage around the world in 1581. Unbelievably, he insisted on making room aboard his cramped ship for four professional musicians. Drake's Progress contrasts this tiny fragment of Elizabethan musical life with the very different sounds of the shores of Africa and the New World, where the astonished sailors described instruments and practices still found today. Their descriptions are narrated alongside performances on the instruments themselves in a musical odyssey that ranges from dancing in the Canary Isles to the great Spanish Armada of 1588.

Other programmes with renaissance music:

The Frozen Jewel of Potosi

The Inkas Golden Ransom