This event is brought to you by the word informance.Thanks to Mary Goetze of Indiana University Bloomington for introducing me to this amazing new word. The idea of informance is that the folks facing the audience do more than simply per-form - maybe they can in-form as well.

The first and most important thing is this: the music is really, really fine. 

We go from there.

 

If this will be your first time listening to music in the Renaissance style, not to worry! Here are some of the easy basics.

 

The toughest part of listening to Renaissance music is learning what to listen for. But it's easier if you consider the structure of the music.

The structure of the music is very closely aligned to the structure of the text: if the sentence comes to a comma, the music will contain a structure that means 'comma'; if the sentence comes to a period, the music has a corresponding structure that seems to indicate, "okay, breathe now!" And so on. These musical structures that mark grammatical phrase and clause endings are called cadences.

 

The next tough part is the language; a lot of the text will be in Latin. Why, you ask? Well it boils down to the fact that the church was one of the only social institutions with an interest in archiving records of rites and rituals. So, while folks outside the church were merrily singing a cappella and not caring to write things down, the church did a great deal of archivin: wood, bones, and liturgical music, among other sundry collectibles.

 

Bottom line is, we end up with a lot of music in Latin. Sorry. And you're kinda lost if you don't know Latin. But again - not to worry. We'll sing some stuff in English too. And for the Latin bits, we've provided translations. Click the link on the left, "Concert Information," scroll down to the Concert Stuff section, and there you go. Follow as we sing, if you're not already occupied with tweeting about how amazing we sound. And of course, you could resolve the whole issue by learning Latin in time for the concert. Simple, really.

  

I've started posting program notes on the About the Repertoire page. If you have thoughts, either commentary or editorial, please let me know. I'm happy to learn from and incorporate the wisdom of the group. 

Also, please check out my thoughts on Performance Practice principles. I don't think I've said anything objectionable, but if I have, let's talk about it.