Music in the Time of Charlemagne

Elisse Albian ~ soprano
Elisa Sutherland ~ alto
leiken ~ tenor
Tracy Cowert ~ medieval harp
Doug Balliett ~ psaltery and direction

Around the year 800 AD, a huge collection of music suddenly appeared all over Europe, music which is complex, subtle, and highly emotional. This is the first notated western music, and its miraculous appearance is directly linked to Charlemagne and his dream of a reformed Roman empire. The Carolingian Renaissance produced Europe’s first identifiable composers, whose eager and inventive voices can be discerned 1200 years later. Special attention will be given to Notker the Stammerer, a 9th-century visionary monk, biographer of Charlemagne, and composer of works that some scholars call the birth of western drama.

Theotokos Ensemble is the living embodiment of a Baroque church ensemble. Founded in 2020, the ensemble is in residence at St. Mary’s Church in Manhattan. Every week a new Mass cantata is composed by director Doug Balliett and performed by the ensemble, along with relevant Baroque masterworks. Theotokos has given concerts of sacred vocal music in America and Europe, including “The Passion before Bach”, Telemann’s Harmonischer Gottesdienst cantatas, music of 11th-century monk Hermann of Reichenau, Charpentier’s Leçons de Tenebres, Marian works of the Renaissance, and the sacred madrigals of Marenzio.