The Music of the Spheres

“Sleep, fleshly birth, in peaceful earth
And let thine ears list to the music of the spheres.”

	Pythagoras, Aristotle, Dante, Milton ... The Greeks spoke of an ever-present music created by the planets as they revolved around the earth. We had lost the ability to hear this celestial music because of the hustle and bustle of everyday life. This idea has fascinated writers and composers ever since. In medieval times music and astronomy were further linked in the quadrivium, along with geometry and mathematics: proportion and number, as evident in natural acoustic properties, proof of God's creation. This programme is an adventure in sound and explores Renaissance masterworks that combine these features, through extraordinary structural devices or unusual soundscapes (chromaticism or bitonality), making a music of the spheres on earth.
"Music, the greatest good that mortals know And all of heaven we have below’"
Josquin – Agnus Dei from ‘Missa L’homme armé sexti toni’ Don Fernando de las Infantas – Loquebantur varris linguis Lassus – Prophetiae Sibyllarum Tallis – Miserere mihi Gombert – Lugebat David Absalom
	Tomkins – When David heard Sheppard – Libera nos Hildegard of Bingen – O viridissima virga Victoria – Ave Maria. De Wert – Ascendente Iesu in naviculam

This programme requires a resonant building for best effect.
This list of pieces is only a suggestion and must be confirmed with I Fagiolini before going to print.