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Il Gran Capitano della Morte
Death's Great Captain

Staged live at Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe, SE16 5HF

Influenced by Director Oliver Doyle's doctoral research on music, lifestyle and ethics in fifteenth and early-sixteenth century Italy, this concert presents a soundscape of Florence from the end of the primacy of Lorenzo the Magnificent, through the brutal rise and fall of the preacher Girolamo Savonarola, and into the restoration of the Medici at the start of the sixteenth century.

Contrasting the amorous - sometimes scandalous - nature of secular music of the period with the complete rejection of most forms of music by Savonarola (architect of the Bonfire of the Vanities), this programme combines jewels of fifteenth century polyphony, simple plainchant and laude with secular lute songs and carnival music preserved in a songbook owned by a young Florentine woman, Marietta Pugi, at the start of the sixteenth century. It is a pleasure to be joined by Emma-Lisa Roux, who will perform these in the manner in which Marietta might have: self accompanied on the lute. You can hear her performing Sandrin's Puisque vivre below.

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As ever, a bar selling wine, soft drinks and Holy Trinity's famous home-infused gins will be open from 7pm.
 

This concert will finish at 9:10pm. Please note that this concert will take place on a Sunday evening, rather than our usual Saturday. This is to allow Emma-Lisa to join us, and to avoid several clashes with fellow concert series in London the night before.

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Programme


Johannes Ockeghem: Ma bouche rit
Meschine su chut
Johannes Martini: Missa Ma bouche rit
Alexander Agricola: Fortuna desperata

Alexander Coppinus: Lanzi man star cozone

Anonymous: Io sono il Gran Capitano della Morte
Heinrich Isaac: Quis dabit caput meo aquam (lament for Lorenzo de' Medici)
Plainsong: Ecce Quam Bonum

Josquin: Parfons regretz
Nymphes, nappés

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Musica Antica

Emma-Lisa Roux soprano and lute
Camilla Seale mezzo soprano

Tristram Cooke countertenor
Oliver Doyle tenor
Joachim Sabbat bass

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Sarah Small viols

Harry Buckoke viols

Peter Martin lute

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