Broadcast concert ‘Codex Lerma’

On Thursday February 12th, as of 20:00, you can listen to a recording of a very special concert in ‘Concertzender Live’, which was held last year December in St. Peter's Church in Utrecht. You will hear music from an old Spanish music book: the ‘Codex Lerma’, performed by Capella Sancta Maria led by Enrique López-Cortón and winds ensemble La Caravaggia.

The ‘Codex Lerma’, a book for wind players, was used at the court of Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval (1552-1625), the first duke of Lerma. For a long time the book was gathering dust in a church in the little Spanish town, until musicologist Maarten Vente from Utrecht noticed the book in the 1950s. Vente offered to buy the book and consequently saved it from further decay. In 1959 the work could finally be bought and ever since it has been stored in the library of Utrecht University. A few years ago, the library digitalised the entire codex and made it available online.

Scribbles

The ‘Codex Lerma’ was a true user manual, scribbled in Spanish handwriting. The current state of the book is not very good, but luckily there is enough left of the book to discover the most beautiful music pieces. The codex contains some unique works of Clemens Non Papa, but Lassus is the most frequent composer in the manuscript. The code ‘Codex Lerma’ is one of the very rare sources of Lassus'
music in Spain. Besides that, a group of Italian composers is represented with mostly six-part madrigals, some of which were very popular at the time, like Alessandro Striggio and the virtually unknown Giovan Leonardo Primavera and Jacopo Corfini.

After 400 years, the ensembles Capella Sancta Maria led by Enrique López-Cortón and La Caravaggia brought the music back to life, on the 19th of December 2014, and the Concertzender recorded this!

• Thursday 12 February 2015, 20:00 – 22:00.
• Friday 20 February 2015,
  15:00 – 17:00.