Harmonia Uncut

This week our travels take us to Elizabethan England via the music of Robert Parsons, William Byrd’s immediate predecessor at the Chapel Royal. Sadly, Parsons drowned in the prime of life, but he left us a wonderful legacy of stunning polyphony for both the Anglican and Catholic rites as well as some striking instrumental music. […]

Are you feeling landlocked?  Ready to catch a few waves, splash in the surf and dig your toes in the sand?  This hour on Harmonia, we’re headed to the beach, exploring ocean-themed music from across the centuries.  From the winds and waves of a storm at sea to divine guidance, from mythological sea creatures to […]

The Cathedral of Notre Dame was heavily damaged in April 2019 by a disastrous fire, and although its largest historical organ managed to survive, there was much devastation. Strangely, we already had a Harmonia program in the pipeline exploring the musical legacy of this great Cathedral. As a result, this hour’s Harmonia program has in […]

Imagine being a violinist and conductor whom both Haydn and Beethoven want to hire to conduct premieres of their work . . . you’re in the same freemasons’ lodge as Mozart . . . and you’re a prominent person in the musical life of Vienna, composing ballet, stage and orchestral works, and chamber music; conducting […]

From time to time on Harmonia, we like to feature music written for a particular historical instrument. This week, we’re getting to know the chalumeau, whose brief popularity left a lasting impression. It’s a single-reed instrument we might describe as the ancestor of the clarinet. We’ll also hear music featuring another woodwind — the oboe […]

This hour we’re exploring the work of a composer for whom more music survives than any other composer working around 1400 in Europe.  Join us for a sampling of the eclectic works of Johannes Ciconia.  Our featured release is a 2018 recording from Montréal Baroque, Bach: Cantatas for Luther. We heard the first movement of […]

Salamone Rossi was an Italian string player and composer working at the turn of the 17th century, a contemporary of Monteverdi and Caccini. Join us as we mull musically over a Mantuan musician who left an indelible imprint on European music. Speaking of indelible, our featured release is a 2018 recording from The Brook Street […]

Imagine being a singer in your late 20’s in the Sistine Chapel choir, with Josquin des Pres as a colleague. That was the fate of Costanzo Festa, who was one of the first Italians to join the ranks of the distinguished northern musicians so prominent in Rome before the mid-16th century. On Harmonia this hour we […]

Birds are nature’s original songsters, and it’s a rare musician who has managed to turn a deaf ear to their music. From Medieval troubadours to avant-garde stylists, composers throughout the centuries have listened – and sought to imitate – the melodies of our fine feathered friends. It’s a musical aviary this week on Harmonia, including […]

This week, we travel back in time to the Italian city of Venice. Lined with gondola-filled canals, stunning architecture, and mystical glass, Venice still enchants visitors with its multi-layered history and culture, not to mention its many centuries of splendid music. And it wasn’t just Monteverdi – we’ll hear music from several centuries by other […]

During the Renaissance, Spain’s voyages to the Americas brought about power and prosperity to its empire. After a royal decree in 1503, Seville’s port held exclusive shipping rights from the New World. With this newfound position of wealth, Seville became a cultural and financial powerhouse—especially the Seville cathedral, which was also a musical powerhouse, as […]

This week, a journey back to the 14th century, which in Italy would be called the trecento, for an hour of music from the beautiful Italian city of Florence at the dawn of the Renaissance. Lorenzo da Firenze, or “Laurence of Florence” was one of a group of composers who lived and worked in that […]

The philosophical, scholarly, and creative thinkers of the 17th and 18th-century period we call the Enlightenment looked back to the Ancients to inspire their forward-looking science and art. They found creativity in the retelling of tales from Greek and Roman mythology—but with what we might call a Baroque twist. This hour, musical tales from the […]

From PRI, Public Radio International, welcome to Harmonia. I’m Angela Mariani. This week we set our time-travelling flux capacitor back to the year 1578, with instrumental part-music associated with the town of Chichester but kept in a manuscript now in London’s British Library. It contains the only copy we have of some of its pieces, […]

From PRI, Public Radio International, welcome to Harmonia. I’m Angela Mariani. This week, we’re going to meet Thomas Weelkes, one of the most gifted of the early 17th-century English madrigalists and a major composer of church music.  Join us as we look at Weelkes’ colorful life and listen to some of his sublime music. Plus, […]