Musica dei Donum

Echoing the exhibition Les Dieux de la Maison this programme offers a portrait of everyday domestic music-making from the Renaissance to the Baroque period. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the viola da gamba became the instrument par excellence of musical education in Europe. In England, many households owned a chest of viols — a cabinet containing viols of different sizes for ensemble playing. Sacred and secular traditions coexisted within a repertoire that developed highly sophisticated polyphony based on popular songs and plainchant melodies. This music was performed in the home, in church, and in public spaces alike. In barber shops, for example, it was not uncommon for customers to take down an instrument hanging on the wall and play while waiting their turn. In France, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, founder of the great French school of viola da gamba playing, welcomed audiences into his home, where he and his two daughters — both accomplished viol players — offered what might be described as “street concerts.” In Germany, the instrument also became the voice of mourning: poems commemorating the dead were sung in the home, accompanied by viol consorts. In dialogue with the boro textiles featured in the exhibition, this programme also highlights the processes of borrowing and reappropriation through which composers transformed works by their contemporaries and popular melodies into new creations of their own. Works by Josquin Des Prez, Heinrich Isaac, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, and Johann Sebastian Bach.and archetype move through the living body. Proietto’s work returns to the ritual roots of dance - where movement was not performance, but presence. It embodies themes of birth, life, and mortality, inviting reflection on what endures in us, what must be reclaimed, and what we carry forward.