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"In this merry month of May"
contains music praising the arrival of spring and especially the month of May. The songs tell us how nature changes and becomes pleasant, how flowers grow and all troubles disappear, how beautiful birdsong is. In some pieces, birdsong is musically put into the composition, 600 years before Messiaen. And naturally, the month of May is the enchanting period if spring love...
"Ars Nova"
a program presenting the "new stile" which soon dominated the music of the 14th century. It started with an angry French priest, Philippe de Vitry, writing a treaty, and ended far away, on Cyprus, 100 years later. In between a lot of very exciting things happened: the composers loved to experiment with the new way of writing music, experiments sometimes not so unlike works of modernists in the 20th century.
"My end is my beginning"- Medieval music back and forth.
Most people, both children & adults, have some time played around with words, trying to read them back and forth, and some words are actually identical whether you read them the right way or start from the end: these words are called palindromes. Of course this was known by the medieval man, and medieval musicians as well! Playful medieval composers have left quite a few musical riddles to us, some of them are to be played back-and-forth, some are written in circles (where does one start?) or other figures and sometime you find a hint how to read and play the piece hidden in the poem itself!
"Unter der Linden
Here ELN interpret the German "troubadours" the minnesänger, from Walter to Oswald.
"....where angels sing...." - Music around Saint Birgitta.
The audience is in this program invited to join the only Swedish canonized saint, Saint Bridget (1300-1374) on her tours - through various countries of Europe but also to the heavenly spheres - by using the saint's own words and music from her time.
"Maria Mater"
This program is dedicated to the Holy Virgin, who was so much honoured in medieval times.
"O in Italia"
This is a program with Italian music of the 14th and 15th century: devout praising songs do beautifully blend with virtuoso music from the "trecento"-period. Amongst composers we find the famous organist Francesco, later on called Landini, and among the instruments, the very rare lira da braccio, the instrument played by Leonardo da Vinci.
Ensemble Laude Novella does a great deal of performing at schools- as a part of musical education as well as illustrating historical events or epochs. There are different programs: As an introduction ELN presents "The Middle Ages at school" where the ensemble, using a small and handy background, easily moves back into the medieval period. There one can meet victims of the plague, saints and pilgrims, one gets to hear jesters' earthbound music and examples of heavenly sounds from a Swedish monastery.
"Pirates on the Baltic Sea"
tells the story of the "Vitalians", a brotherhood which around 1400 ravaged both North sea and Baltic sea. It all started off with smuggling - Stockholm was besieged by Danish troops by order of Queen Margareta I, and food had to be smuggled in to the predominantly German population; and it was all over in 1401, when the most cruel and famous pirates were executed in Hamburg. In this performance, the fearful "vitalian" Goedecke Michels turns up - who is Utes' grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's ...