Midlands Early Music Forum

SingTheScore Extra with Robert Hollingworth
2021-05-08 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/London) | Online(Zoom)
Another in our popular series of Zooms with Robert Hollingworth of I Fagiolini and guest. Robert is a natural chat show host and these Saturday mornings are always entertaining and informative. He will talk about the music he has chosen and you will have a chance to sing it through twice. The guest this week is Greg Browning who will enthrall us with tales of his filming exploits with I Fagiolini over the last 20 years! He will play clips to us of his favourite moments and perhaps even the odd out take! His direction, production and filming of The Polyphonic Concert Club was quite something. He will also be open to questions so have any you might want to ask ready.
Please book below.

Definitely not the Pope - an online workshop with Rory McCleery
2021-05-15 11:00 - 12:00
In this workshop, Rory McCleery, Artistic Director of The Marian Consort, examines the music of Clemens non Papa and his elusive biography, including the origins of his intriguing soubriquet. We will be exploring some of Clemens’ lesser-known Marian motets, including Videte miraculum and O Maria vernans rosa, as well as the famous Ego flos campi and the chanson that seems to have given him his nickname, found in the colourful manuscript songbook of Zeghere van Male. We will be singing these as part of the workshop, with pdf scores circulated in advance.
Rory McCleery began his musical career as a chorister at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh. He gained a double first in music at Oxford University as both Organ and Domus Academic scholar of St Peter’s College, subsequently completing an MSt in Musicology with Distinction. Rory is the founder and director of The Marian Consort, with whom he performs across the UK, Europe and North America. Under his direction, The Marian Consort has become renowned internationally for its compelling interpretations of a wide range of repertoire, particularly the music of the Renaissance and early Baroque, but also of works by contemporary British composers, and in 2017 was nominated for a Gramophone Award. As a countertenor, Rory greatly enjoys performing as a soloist and consort singer with other ensembles including The Dunedin Consort, Contrapunctus, The Monteverdi Choir, The Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort, Le Concert d’Astre?e, The Academy of Ancient Music, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The Cardinall’s Musick. He also enjoys a solo career in venues across the UK and Europe, has appeared as a soloist for broadcasts on UK and European radio, and collaborates regularly with the Rose Consort of Viols. Rory is much in demand as a guest conductor, workshop leader and programming consultant, and has led workshop sessions, study days and singing courses across the UK, Germany, Spain and the USA, working with choirs of all ages and sizes in repertoire from 16th to 21st century. He is a passionate believer in the importance of music education and singing for young people and is director of choral music at City, University of London.
Booking will open in May.

SingTheScore Extra with Robert Hollingworth
2021-05-22 11:00 - 12:00
Another in our popular series of Zooms with Robert Hollingworth of I Fagiolini and guest. Robert is a natural chat show host and these Saturday mornings are always entertaining and informative.
This week Robert and Nicolas Mulroy will talk about Monteverdi. They will each choose a track, play it and talk about why they like it and other Monteverdi-ish things. The two tracks are Laudate Dominum and T’amo mia vita and you will receive links to the scores when you book (see below) and have a chance to sing them on the day.
Questions welcome, as always.

SingtheScore Extra with Robert Hollingworth
2021-06-05 11:00 - 12:00
The last this summer in our popular fortnightly series of Zooms with Robert Hollingworth of I Fagiolini and guest. Robert is a natural chat show host and these Saturday mornings are always entertaining and informative. He will talk about the music he has chosen and you will have a chance to sing it through twice. This week’s guest will be the musicologist Professor Laurie Stras who will talk about the (until recently) mostly unknown world of music in convents in 16th century Italy.
Professor Stras is co-director of two early music ensembles, Musica Secreta and an amateur female-voice choir, Celestial Sirens. For over twenty years, her principal research focus has been the female musicians at the court and convents of 16th-century Ferrara, and she has complemented this research with performance activities with her two ensembles. Her monograph on the female musicians at the court and convents of 16th-century Ferrara, Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara will be published in 2018. She is also Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield.
Robert is hoping to continue SingTheScore Extra in the autumn, but probably only once a month.
Please book below.

Henry Purcell and the Music of Westminster Abbey with Patrick Craig
2021-06-05 20:00 - 21:00
Another presentation in Patrick’s inimitable style, with wonderful pictures, musical excerpts and personal anecdotes.
Henry Purcell has been described as England’s Orpheus and ranks alongside the greatest of this country’s composers. His rise to the position of Organist of Westminster Abbey at the age of 20 saw him lauded above the talents of his predecessor, John Blow and his teacher, Pelham Humfrey, both of whose music we will hear in order to place Purcell in context. His family home was just round the corner from the Abbey and for a while he turned his back on the theatre music he had been pursuing to focus on this job.
As a countertenor Patrick has had the joy of singing much of Purcell’s solo music and will be delighted to share this colourful period in our country’s history. Including music by Gibbons and Croft, Patrick will trace some of the most influential names in the musical heritage of Westminster Abbey and guide us through this extraordinary building.
Please book below.

Zoom Celebration with Robert Hollingworth
2021-07-03 10:00 - 12:00
What a strange 16 months it has been. How we have all adapted to keeping early music and musicians going as best we can, has been quite amazing at times. To celebrate this, we are finishing our season before our traditional summer break as we started, with Robert Hollingworth and a MEMF zoom workshop. Who knows what we will come back to in the Autumn – still zooming, live workshops? At present we just don’t know but we are going to sign off in style.
The session will start with a short chat between Robert and MEMF chair Nancy about how, in April 2020, they started things off, how difficult it was coping with the new technology we suddenly had to use and the pitfalls that beset the first sessions as we dipped our toes into the world of zoom, mute. etc – and who can forget the arguments over chat….
Then we are asking you to vote for some of your favourite MEMF zoom workshops and the Saturday morning EXTRA sessions. To help you choose there will be a list of all the Zoom sessions we have hosted and there will be voting buttons on the Jotform for you to fill in. You will hear a clip from the most popular ones during the session.

Please book below.

Jean Maillard - International Man of Mystery with Tutor Rory McCleery
2022-01-23 19:00 - 21:00
In view of the recent alarming rise in Covid cases we felt it sensible to cancel our live workshop with Rory McCleery at the beginning of January and have this Zoom session instead, which Rory is happy to do.

Despite his being identified as ‘one of the most important French composers of the sixteenth century’ by the renowned Musicologist François Lesure nearly half a century ago, Jean Maillard is a figure who remains shrouded in mystery and whose works have rarely been performed in modern times. This contrasts sharply with his reception during his own lifetime: his works were widely disseminated and survive in manuscripts and prints originating in Germany, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK. Telling also is the number of composers who modelled their own compositions on works by Maillard: this list includes fellow Frenchman Goudimel and also such luminaries as Orlando Lassus, Jacob Handl and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. It is possible that Maillard harboured Protestant sympathies which may have resulted in his exclusion from the circles of the Catholic royal court in Paris, and even, like his fellow composer Claude Goudimel, his death in the 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day massacres.
The session will last around 2 hours in all – 45 minutes then a 15 minute tea break with another 45 minutes and time for questions.
We shall be singing:
Pierre Cadeac Je suis desheritee
Jean Maillard Agnus Dei
Jean Maillard Fratres mei elongaverunt
Jean Maillard Omnes gentes attendite
Jean Maillard Ascendo ad Patrem meum
Jean Maillard In me transierunt
Jean Maillard Gaudent in caelis
Please book below. As usual all donations will go directly to Rory so please donate what you can.
