Past Events

Songes et Mençonges:
Medieval visions and dreams of prophecy, love and folly

Songes et Mençonges: Dreams and Deceptions

The Boston Camerata Anne Azéma, voice, hurdy gurdy, harp, direction Shira Kammen, vielle, harp Timothy Leigh Evans, Michael Barrett, John Taylor Ward, voice

Medieval dreams, and even madness and folly, are frequently evoked in medieval music and poetry. Listening, we enter, via the delirium and desires of love, or the intimations of social decay, into a kind of dark transcendance. But these apparitions may also point upwards, serving as prelude to some heroic action, via the nighttime visions of kings and heroes. And they may also lead to a higher spiritual plane, via exalting, mystical epiphanies.

Anne Azéma, understands how to give to her songs the tragic intensity and dramatic power that are too often missing from academic recreations of medieval music.- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Magic sensuality. It may well alter the way we look at the Middle Ages. – The Boston Globe

 

Jun 12, 2019
11:00pm

Join us in Boston for eight days of award-winning opera, celebrated concerts, the world-famous Exhibition, and more—JUNE 9–16, 2019! BEMF’s 20th BIENNIAL FESTIVAL, featuring the theme of “Dreams & Madness,” brings the world of Early Music together in Boston for a weeklong celebration.


Songes et Mençonges:
Medieval visions and dreams of prophecy, love and folly

Songes et Mençonges: Dreams and Deceptions

The Boston Camerata Anne Azéma, voice, hurdy gurdy, harp, direction Shira Kammen, vielle, harp Timothy Leigh Evans, Michael Barrett, John Taylor Ward, voice

Medieval dreams, and even madness and folly, are frequently evoked in medieval music and poetry. Listening, we enter, via the delirium and desires of love, or the intimations of social decay, into a kind of dark transcendance. But these apparitions may also point upwards, serving as prelude to some heroic action, via the nighttime visions of kings and heroes. And they may also lead to a higher spiritual plane, via exalting, mystical epiphanies.

Anne Azéma, understands how to give to her songs the tragic intensity and dramatic power that are too often missing from academic recreations of medieval music.- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Magic sensuality. It may well alter the way we look at the Middle Ages. – The Boston Globe

 

Aug 25, 2017
8:15pm
Martinskirche
Basel, Switzerland

The Boston Camerata makes its long awaited debut in Switzerland. Anne Azéma and her colleagues will open the Basel Early Music Festival with a newly commissioned program of songs from the Middle Ages, exploring the themes of sleep and dreams, including works by the visionary Hildegard of Bingen.