2009 Press Releases
Revealing the Secret Music Practices of Italian Renaissance Convents
01.07.2009
Sacred Hearts, Secret Music is the latest ground-breaking recording co-directed by Dr Laurie Stras and Ms Deborah Roberts, visiting voice teacher at University College Cork. The women’s vocal ensembles Musica Secreta and the Celestial Sirens recorded sacred music by composers Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina and Cipriano de Rore as it might have been sung in Italian Renaissance convents.
01.07.2009
Sacred Hearts, Secret Music is the latest ground-breaking recording co-directed by Dr Laurie Stras and Ms Deborah Roberts, visiting voice teacher at University College Cork. The women’s vocal ensembles Musica Secreta and the Celestial Sirens recorded sacred music by composers Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina and Cipriano de Rore as it might have been sung in Italian Renaissance convents.
Membership includes Dr Melanie L. Marshall, UCC lecturer in music. The musical world of Italian Renaissance convents is little known today yet in many sixteenth-century cities the passionate, ornamented singing and instrumental playing of women who were heard but not necessarily seen was a tourist attraction and source of civic pride. The recording complements the new novel by Sarah Dunant, Sacred Hearts (Virago). Both will be launched in a special event opening the London Literature Festival at the Royal Festival Hall at 7pm tomorrow, July 2nd. From that date, the recording will be available from the Divine Art website (http://divineartdigital.downloadcentric.net/)
Internationally-known soprano Deborah Roberts began her career combining music editing with singing in various professional early music ensembles. She dedicated much of her career to singing with the Tallis Scholars, with whom she gave over 1,200 concerts of Renaissance polyphony throughout the world. Having always maintained great interest in the Italian Renaissance and early Baroque, Deborah founded Musica Secreta to perform much of this rare music, and the group has now toured Europe, visited the USA with an education-based schedule, and released six individual and cutting-edge recordings to high critical acclaim. In 2002 Deborah co-founded the Brighton Early Music Festival primarily with the view to promoting scholarly but original and innovating performances and workshops aimed at a broad spectrum of the population. It has grown to be the second largest early music festival in the UK. As a teacher, Deborah is concerned with vocal health and consequently she concentrates on healthy voice production techniques across a number of performing styles. In 2007, Deborah opened a private vocal studio at UCC.
A lecturer in music at UCC and member of the board of directors of East Cork Early Music, Dr Melanie L. Marshall is a musicologist and performer specialising in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian vocal music. Melanie’s research focuses on issues of gender and identity in Renaissance and early modern music and her performing interests lie in historically-informed performing practice particularly in relation to women’s musical practices. In addition to lecturing and supervising postgraduate research in music at UCC, she coordinates the student early music and Renaissance vocal ensembles.
Extracts from the recording accompany the dramatization of Sacred Hearts on BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour and Book of the Week from June 29th to July 10th inclusive. The recording, Sacred Hearts, Secret Music, is released on Divine Art. It will be available on CD from September 2009 and as a download (http://divineartdigital.downloadcentric.net/) from July 2nd 2009.
Further information: UCC Department of Music: http://www.music.ucc.ie/
1161MMcS
Internationally-known soprano Deborah Roberts began her career combining music editing with singing in various professional early music ensembles. She dedicated much of her career to singing with the Tallis Scholars, with whom she gave over 1,200 concerts of Renaissance polyphony throughout the world. Having always maintained great interest in the Italian Renaissance and early Baroque, Deborah founded Musica Secreta to perform much of this rare music, and the group has now toured Europe, visited the USA with an education-based schedule, and released six individual and cutting-edge recordings to high critical acclaim. In 2002 Deborah co-founded the Brighton Early Music Festival primarily with the view to promoting scholarly but original and innovating performances and workshops aimed at a broad spectrum of the population. It has grown to be the second largest early music festival in the UK. As a teacher, Deborah is concerned with vocal health and consequently she concentrates on healthy voice production techniques across a number of performing styles. In 2007, Deborah opened a private vocal studio at UCC.
A lecturer in music at UCC and member of the board of directors of East Cork Early Music, Dr Melanie L. Marshall is a musicologist and performer specialising in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian vocal music. Melanie’s research focuses on issues of gender and identity in Renaissance and early modern music and her performing interests lie in historically-informed performing practice particularly in relation to women’s musical practices. In addition to lecturing and supervising postgraduate research in music at UCC, she coordinates the student early music and Renaissance vocal ensembles.
Extracts from the recording accompany the dramatization of Sacred Hearts on BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour and Book of the Week from June 29th to July 10th inclusive. The recording, Sacred Hearts, Secret Music, is released on Divine Art. It will be available on CD from September 2009 and as a download (http://divineartdigital.downloadcentric.net/) from July 2nd 2009.
Further information: UCC Department of Music: http://www.music.ucc.ie/
1161MMcS