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Sequentia
Founded by Benjamin Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton, Sequentia can look back on more than 30 years of international concert tours, performing throughout Europe, North and South America, India, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia. Sequentia has brought to life over seventy innovative concert programs that encompass the entire spectrum of medieval music, in addition to the creation of music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, the Cividale Planctus Marie, the Bordesholmer Marienklage, and Heinrich von Meissen’s Frauenleich (several of which were filmed for television). The work of the ensemble is divided between a small touring ensemble of vocal and instrumental soloists, and a larger ensemble of men’s voices for the performance of Latin liturgical chant and polyphony. Sequentia has inspired new generations of young performers, many of whom were trained in professional courses given by Benjamin Bagby and other members of the ensemble. After 25 years based in Cologne, Germany, Sequentia’s home has been in Paris since 2002.
Sequentia: Background Information
Benjamin
Bagby, co-founder and director
BagbyBeowulf.com
Vocalist, harper and scholar Benjamin Bagby, who was captivated by medieval music as a teenager, has been an important figure in the field of medieval musical performance for almost 30 years. His long career has been almost uniquely devoted to the work of Sequentia, which he co-founded with Barbara Thornton in 1977 while they were completing their diplomas at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Apart from Sequentia, Mr. Bagby devotes his time to the solo performance of Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic oral poetry: his acclaimed bardic re-telling of Beowulf continues to be performed worldwide and a DVD of his performance was released in 2007. In addition to researching and writing about the performance practice of medieval music, he has been a guest lecturer and professor, teaching courses and workshops all over Europe and North America. Since 2005 he teaches in the masters programme for medieval music performance practice at the University of Paris – Sorbonne.
(for more information see www.BagbyBeowulf.com)
Recordings
Sequentia’s comprehensive discography of more than thirty recordings spans the entire Middle Ages (including the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen), and the ensemble’s recordings have received numerous prizes, including a Disque d’Or, several Diapasons d’Or, two Edison Prizes, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and a Grammy nomination. Recordings made by Sequentia have been integrated into the soundtracks of several major films. click here for discography
The past years have seen a growing corpus of Sequentia recordings centered on the importance of oral tradition, story-telling, and the earliest musical documents of medieval Europe: In 2002, Sequentia released an acclaimed 2-CD set of sung tales from medieval Iceland: The Rheingold Curse: A Germanic Saga of Greed and Vengeance from the Medieval Icelandic Edda, on the independent Marc Aurel Edition label (www.aurel.de). Other recent programs, such as Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (released on the BMG Classics/DHM label in 2004), and Chant Wars, (SONY-BMG / 2005, a co-production with the Parisian ensemble Dialogos) have received wide international critical acclaim. The most recent recording, Fragments for the End of Time, featuring apocalyptic songs from early medieval Germany, Saxony and Aquitaine, was released on the Raumklang label in 2008 (www.raumklang.de).
Discography:
All releases on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label (Sony-BMG Classics) except for numbers 24, 25, 27 & 29. The releases which are still available (or newly-available in reissues) are marked with an asterisk (*).
1.) Spielmann und Kleriker (LP, 1981)
2.) Hildegard von Bingen: Ordo Virtutum (2 LPs, 1982)
3.) Spruchdichtung des 13. Jahrhunderts (LP, 1983)
4.) Hildegard von Bingen: Sinfoniae (LP, 1983) *
5.) Trouvères (3 LPs, 1984; re-issued as 2 CDs).
6.) English Songs of the Middle Ages (LP, 1986) *
7.) Philippe le Chancelier / School of Notre Dame (CD,1987) *
8.) Philippe de Vitry: Motets and Chansons (CD, 1988)*
9.) Vox Iberica I: Sons of Thunder / Music for St. James the Apostle (CD, 1989)
10.) Vox Iberica II: Codex Las Huelgas (CD, 1990)
11.) Vox Iberica III: El Sabio (CD, 1991)
12.) Bordesholmer Marienklage (2 CDs, 1992)
13.) Oswald von Wolkenstein: Lieder (CD, 1993)
14.) Hildegard von Bingen: Canticles of Ecstasy (CD, 1993) *
15.) Dante and the Troubadours (CD, 1994) *
16.) Hildegard von Bingen: O Jerusalem (CD, 1994) *
17.) Hildegard von Bingen: Voice of the Blood (CD, 1995) *
18.) Hildegard von Bingen: Saints (2 CDs, 1996) *
19.) Shining Light: Christmas Music from Aquitanian Monasteries (CD, 1996)
20.) Aquitania: Christmas Music from Aquitanian Monasteries (CD, 1997)
21.) Hildegard von Bingen: Ordo Virtutum [new production] (2 CDs, 1998)
22.) Edda: Myths from Medieval Iceland (CD, 1999) *
23.) Frauenlob: In Praise of the Celestial Woman (CD, 2000) [recorded in 1990]
24.) The Rheingold Curse: A Germanic Saga from the Medieval Icelandic Edda (2 CDs, 2002)
(released by Marc Aurel Edition / Cologne, Germany / www.aurel.de) *
25.) With Voice & Pen [major participation in an anthology CD recording of medieval song to accompany a book-length collection of the collected writings on medieval music by musicologist Leo Treitler: With Voice & Pen (Oxford UP, 2004)] *
26.) Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (CD, 2004) *
27.) Krone und Schleier (Crown and Veil: Music from Medieval Female Monasteries) WDR Köln / Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (CD, 2005). [anthology recording made to accompany a major German exhibition of medieval art from women’s monasteries.] *
28.) Chant Wars [in collaboration with the ensemble Dialogos, directed by Katarina Livljanic], (CD, 2005) *
29.) Beowulf (DVD, 2007) *
30.) Endzeitfragmente (Fragments for the End of Time), CD, 2008) *
Music Theater
In addition to the program Edda Eins (performed as a theatrical production 1995-7 in Scandinavia, North America and Africa under the auspices of the Goethe Institute), Sequentia's other music-theater projects have included Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum (West German Television, 1982 and subsequent tours in 1984, 1986, 1990, and 1998-9); the Cividale Planctus Marie; the Bordesholmer Marienklage (West German TV, 1992, and Boston Early Music Festival, 1987); and Heinrich von Meissen's Frauenleich (Frankurter Feste, 1987 and recording 1990). The Edda project continued in 2001 with a new production: performances of the Eddic poems which later formed the basis of Wagner's ‘Ring’ cycle. For this project, Mr. Bagby collaborated with the New York stage director Ping Chong, in a project commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (and subsequently performed in the Utrecht Early Music Festival, USA tour, and in Scandinavia).
Research and Education
Since 1984, Sequentia has been consistently dedicated to teaching intensive courses and workshops in medieval music performance. The most important of these has been the 2-week summer course given at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (in collaboration with Early Music Vancouver). Of the more than 200 musicians who have attended this course over the years, more than 20 have gone on to become either associate members of Sequentia or performers of medieval music in their own professional ensembles. Beginning in late 2005, highly-motivated students have been able to study with both Benjamin Bagby and Katarina Livljanic (director of the ensemble Dialogos – www.ensemble-dialogos.org) in the newly-created Masters program in medieval music performance at the Sorbonne in Paris (for further information click here).
As a guest lecturer and professor, Bagby has taught courses and workshops at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Indiana University School of Music, University of Oregon, Duke University, Stanford University, the Autunno Musicale (Como, Italy), University of Chicago, the Modus Centrum (Oslo), Amherst Early Music (Tufts University), Wellesley College, the University of Texas at Austin, Northwestern University, the New England Conservatory of Music, Sarah Lawrence College, St. John's College (Santa Fe), the Studio Alte Musik (Berlin), the Royaumont Foundation (Paris) and the Stary Sacz Festival (Poland), the Musikhochschule Freiburg and many others.
Since 2000, Bagby has been a guest speaker at New York University’s Medieval Studies Program, and he spent a semester as a visiting Krieger Fellow at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland); in 2001 he was invited as Patten Lecturer at Indiana University (Humanities and School of Music), a humanities lecturer (together with Ping Chong) at the University of Michigan, and he taught an intensive May Term medieval music course as guest professor at Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington, IL). In 2003 he was awarded – together with Katarina Livljanic -- a fellowship by Harvard University (the Religion and the Arts Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, in conjunction with the Music Department). In 2004-5 Bagby was twice in residence at the University of Oregon as the Trotter Professor of Music. In 2005 he was named as a teacher in the newly-created Masters program in medieval music performance at the University of Paris IV / Sorbonne. In the Spring semester 2007, both Bagby and Livljanic were Mary Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professors at Wellesley College (Massachussetts, USA).
Sequentia presents several new programs during each 2-year period, each of which is carefully researched in collaboration with other scholars. The ensemble has also received research grants from the Siemens Foundation (Germany) and from the Volkswagen Foundation (in association with research & performance of music from manuscripts at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, Germany).
In addition to researching and writing the texts for more than 65 program books for festivals and concert series, and writing (or co-authoring, with Barbara Thornton) more than 25 CD booklets, Benjamin Bagby has written about performance practice, with articles appearing in Early Music, in the Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music, edited by Ross Duffin, the Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, in Performing Medieval Narrative (ed. Evelyn Vitz, Marilyn Lawrence and Nancy Regalado), and most recently, a contribution to New Grove Online.
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