Arts Ancient and Modern

Medieval and contemporary music

A programme in which Gothic Voices casts its eyes both back towards its performing roots and forwards to the present day. The group's first recording, A Feather on the Breath of God, featuring the music of the 12th century German mystic Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, was for many years the best selling record of medieval music ever made. We include a number of Hildegard's hymns and sequences in this programme, contrasted with plainchant and both sacred and secular polyphony of the Ars Antiqua. This is music of interweaving textures and timbres, melodious and captivating.

In the second half we move to music from the later medieval era, in particular the wider ranges and experimental dissonances of Ars Nova works by masters such as Machaut and Solage. From the present day there is a piece written by the contemporary British composer Bayan Northcott, specially commissioned for Gothic Voices. Ave Regina Caelorum is written in a medieval idiom, taking its inspiration both from plainchant and from Dufay's own setting of the Ave Regina - a tribute to the enduring legacy of this music.

You can listen to the following pieces from this programme:

• O Jerusalem       
• Joieux de cuer