The Lord of Misrule: A Medieval Christmas Concert

Sirinu invite you to experience the pre-reformation Christmas with music from the English popular carol tradition. The Christmas period – from the appointment of the Lord of Misrule to Epiphany – was celebrated with an elaborate series of feasts and ceremonies in late medieval England and abroad. By the fifteenth century men wearing monkish habits chose a lunatic fellow to parade as ‘Lord of Misrule’ and commemorated the ‘Feast of Fools’ with street plays. In today’s concert we mark this by interspersing festive English songs of the period with selections from the Piae Cantiones collection from 1582, from which so many of our modern day carols are taken.