Musica Divina 2026: Graindelavoix UNGESTALT

‘Truth’ in murky and troubled polyphony (14th—16th century). In de Parmenides van Plato Socrates denies that formless things like mud, hair, or garbage participate in the truth of the idea or the primal form. In the 15th century, the Neoplatonist Nicolaas van Cusa calls polyphony ‘excrement sticking to the floor tiles’. Polyphony was always a crisis repertoire and that had less to do with its content than with its form. Polyphony lacks a clearly defined, closed form and the composers were all too aware of that. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the polyphonists lead the geometry of polyphony and its forming, formless, and deformed forms to an unprecedented peak. You could call them, with a term borrowed from Albrecht Dürer, the masters of the Ungestalt. Truth is not to be found in the perfect closed Platonic forms, but in the moving, open, and constantly changing forms of polyphony. OCCUPATION Björn Schmelzer, artistic direction Florencia Menconi, soprano Andrew Hallock, altus André Pérez Muiño, tenor Albert Riera, tenor Andrés Miravete, tenor Marius Peterson, tenor Tomàs Maxé, baritone Arnout Malfliet, bass IN COLLABORATION WITH De Warande Stad Turnhout ADDRESS Sint-Pieterskerk Grote Markt 80, Turnhout