Celestial Sirens
with members of Musica Secreta
Music by Josquin des Prez, Cristobal Morales, Cipriano de Rore, Paulo Isnardi, Marc'antonio Ingegneri and Suora Anonima
Join Celestial Sirens to bring in the May with chant, polyphony and song. Mirroring the May Carnival outside the convent walls, sixteenth-century Italian nuns had music for devotion, community and play. Recognised for programmes of visual and musical imagination, Brighton's elite female choir breathes new life into the forgotten music of Renaissance convents.
A special feature of this programme will be songs from a newly discovered manuscript of convent comedies by an aristocratic nun, Suor Annalena Aldobrandini, and polyphonic works by an anonymous nun composer - who may actually be Lucrezia Borgia's daughter, Suor Leonora d'Este. These works have not been heard outside a convent for over four hundred years, and we are delighted to be premiering them in the Brighton Festival Fringe.