Midtown Concerts • Theotokos
Music in the time of Charlemagne
Adrienne Lotto ~ voice
Garrett Eucker ~ voice
Dongmyung Ahn ~ vielle
Tracy Cowart ~ harp & voice
Rocky Duval ~ voice
Doug Balliett ~ harp, organ & direction
Around the year 800, a huge body of music suddenly appeared all over Europe; music which is complex, subtle, and highly emotional. This is the first notated western music, and its miraculous appearance is directly linked to Charlemagne, and his dream of a reformed Roman empire. The Carolingian Renaissance produced Europe’s first identifiable composers whose eager and inventive voices can be discerned 1200 years later. Special attention will be given to Notker the Stammerer, a 9th-century visionary monk and biographer of Charlemagne, as well as the fascinating conquest poem Heliand.
Theotokos Ensemble is the living embodiment of an historic church ensemble. Founded in 2020, the ensemble is in residence at St. Mary’s Church in Manhattan. Every week, director Doug Balliett composes a new Mass cantata which the ensemble performs alongside relevant Baroque and Medieval masterworks. Theotokos has given concerts of sacred vocal music in America and Europe, including Hermann of Reichenau’s Historia Sancti Magni, Telemann’s Harmonischer Gottesdienst cantatas, “The Passion before Bach”, Charpentier’s Leçons de Ténèbres, “Hildegard//Bernard”, and the sacred madrigals of Marenzio.
