Concertzender Live on Thursday 12th February at 20.00 CET features our recording of a very special concert: a performance of music from the Codex Lerma, an old Spanish manuscript. The music is performed by the Capella Sancta Maria led by Enrique López-Cortón and the wind ensemble La Caravaggia more than 400 years after the manuscript was produced.
The Codex Lerma, a book of music for wind instruments, was used in the court of Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval (1552-1625), the first duke of Lerma.
The book lay for many years gathering dust in a church in Lerma until Maarten Vente, a musicologist from Utrecht discovered it in the 1950s. Vente offerred to buy it in order to protect it from further decay. The book was eventually purchased in 1959 and since then has been located in the library of the university of Utrecht. A few years ago, the library digitalised the complete codex and made it available online.
Music
The Codex Lerma was a true manuscript, full of scribbled notes in a messy Spanish scrawl. The book is in a poor state but fortunately there is enough beautiful music still remaining.
The Codex contains references to Clemens Non Papa, but a composer that is mentioned more frequently is Lassus. There are also a number of Italian composers represented mostly by madrigals for six voices, a number of whom were very popular in their lifetimes, such as Striggio and the now almost unknown Giovan Leonardo Primavera and Jacopo Corfini.
On the 19th December 2014, more than 400 years after it had been written doen in the Codex, the ensembles Capella Sancta Maria led by Enrique López-Cortón and La Caravaggia peformed this music in the Pieterskerk in Utrecht, and the Concertzender was there to record it!
Broadcasts:
- Thursday 12th February 2015, 20.00 – 22.00 CET
- Friday 20th February 2015, 15.00 – 17.00 CET
Click here for the programme guide with the full playlist.
Click on the link below to see a fragment from the concert:
