Continuo Connect — Concert // Linarol Consort of Viols: James Gilchrist with Linarol Consort of Viols

This concert, based on the recently released disc, Inn Stetter Hut, is a programme of enchanting 16th Century song performed by one of its leading exponents and authentically accompanied on copies of the earliest surviving viol. Love in all its various forms (unrequited, romantic and lascivious mischief) is explored in these songs, written by leading musical figures working in the court of Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor and richest man in the world. These creative artists included Heinrich Isaac, Paul Hofhaimer and Ludwig Senfl, one of the most prolific composers of German song and secular music of the period.

James Gilchrist and the Linarol Consort’s recording of this repertoire is the culmination of a project started by violist and musicologist David Hatcher. Over a decade ago now he began transcribing the ‘Fugger’ manuscript (Ms. 18-810), a collection of delightful German, Flemish and French pieces from the early 16th Century.