This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
Montréal, October 21, 2024 – Ensemble Scholastica is pleased to announce its upcoming concert McGill’s Special Collections. The concert offers its audience the chance to discover Montréal’s hidden medieval treasures and will be held on Sunday, November 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Notre Dame de Bon Secours Chapel.
Musical notation was first elaborated in Europe during the early Middle Ages. It continued to develop throughout the period to reflect the increasingly sophisticated musical tastes and skills of medieval musicians, composers, and scribes. Their legacy to the modern world is both a universal method of notating music and an immense collection of manuscripts that provide a record of the repertoires of that period. These are the primary sources for the musicians of today who perform medieval music.
Each manuscript also has a story to tell beyond the music it contains. A medieval manuscript rarely remained in its place of origin. Most were lost, transformed, sent far away as gifts or acquired by wealthy parties, only to re-emerge centuries later, often in fragmentary form. In this way, a number of medieval manuscripts and fragments containing musical notation have ended up at McGill University’s Rare Books and Special Collections.
Like McGill, Ensemble Scholastica is based in Montréal. It is also Canada’s only female vocal ensemble that specializes in the performance of medieval plainchant and polyphony. With this concert, Ensemble Scholastica will be the first professional ensemble to create an entire program featuring selections from these largely unknown medieval sources in McGill’s possession.
In addition to the November 10th concert there will be a special pre-concert event introducing the public to McGill’s special collections of medieval manuscripts that will be hosted by McGill Rare Books and Special Collections in collaboration with the Schulich School of Music and Ensemble Scholastica. This free (upon rsvp) event will be held on November 7 at 5 pm at McGill.
L’Ensemble Scholastica se consacre principalement au répertoire vocal allant du IXe au XIVe siècle. Fondé en 2008 par la musicologue Pascale Duhamel et dirigé depuis 2012 par Rebecca Bain, spécialiste de la musique médiévale, il est composé exclusivement de femmes, chanteuses talentueuses et enthousiastes, issues du milieu florissant de la musique ancienne à Montréal. Certaines d’entre elles jouent également de divers instruments de musique.
Récemment, l’Ensemble Scholastica explore des répertoires historiques issus des musiques du monde, notamment malien (2024), arabo-andalous (2023) et indien (2022). Entre 2017 et 2022, il a collaboré avec Geneviève Soly et son ensemble Les Idées heureuses autour de la musique sacrée en Nouvelle-France (XVIIe siècle). Cette collaboration a donné lieu à un concert qui a été nominé deux fois au Prix Opus pour Concert de l’année dans la catégorie « Musiques médiévale, de la Renaissance, baroque » (2018, 2022). De plus, l’Ensemble Scholastica a enregistré deux disques chez ATMA Classique (2017, 2020), auxquels s’ajoute un troisième album à paraître en 2024.
Ensemble Scholastica is a professional female vocal ensemble that specializes in medieval plainchant and polyphony (c. 800-1300 AD). Founded in 2008 by musicologist Pascale Duhamel and directed by leading medievalist Rebecca Bain since 2012, Scholastica is made up of talented and enthusiastic vocalists from Montréal’s thriving early music community, some of whom also play medieval instruments.
In recent years, Ensemble Scholastica has been exploring historical world-music repertoires, including the music of medieval Mali (May), the poetry of Al Andalus (2023) and Indian classical music (2022). Between 2017 and 2022, Scholastica collaborated with Geneviève Soly and her ensemble Les Idées heureuses on a repertoire of sacred music from New France (17th century). Concerts resulting from their collaborative work were nominated twice for a Prix Opus award for Concert of the Year in the category of “Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque Music” (2018, 2022).
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
