This weekend's performances of Cyprus will have tickets available at the door, with tickets starting at $22 ($15 seniors) to $30 for prime seating. Student rush tickets available 15 minutes before the concert for $5 cash.
16-17 May 2008 - CYPRUS: Between Greek East and Latin West
A ground-breaking new program of Mediterranean music researched and directed by Dr. Alexander Lingas. Click here to order tickets.
CYPRUS features two pre-concert talks (one in Portland and one in Seattle). Click here for details.
To this day, the island of Cyprus stands at a crossroads between East and West. Alexander Lingas leads Cappella Romana in an intrepid exploration of 15th- and 16th-century Cypriot music in both Byzantine and Western styles, including virtuosic ars subtilior music composed for the Royal Court of Cyprus (c. 1308-1432) from the manuscript J.II.9 housed at the University of Turin.
Thanks to the Italian National Library Service, you can browse the entire contents of the Franco-Cypriot manuscript J.II.9. (website is in Italian; click on "Apri" to open, "Indice" for the index). In addition to plainsong, Cappella Romana will perform a number of motets from this manuscript (click on 44, 66, 75, and 91 in the index).
Click here to read a short master's thesis on the J.II.9 by Andrée Giselle Simard (2005, University of Akron, Ohio).
Here is one sample of two pages from the manuscript (f.65 - v.66), the motet "Gemma florens militie/Haec dies."
CYPRUS on YouTube
As a preview to this week's concerts, you may view the following video, which uses film from Saturday's rehearsal. Click here to order tickets. Pre-concert talk information here.
This release by Cappella Romana is a breathtaking collection of Medieval Byzantine Chant sung from manuscripts made at the Abbey of Grottaferrata in the suburban hills of Rome, which has operated continuously in the Byzantine rite since its founding, before the Great Schism, in 1004. During the Middle Ages, Grottaferrata was the site of an important scriptorium, the surviving manuscripts of which bear precious witness to musical repertories sung in Constantinople before the Crusader sack of 1204.
Led by virtuoso cantor Ioannis Arvanitis, Cappella Romana recaptures on this recording the artistic vibrancy of medieval Italy's Greek minority with ecstatic 13th-century chants. Disc one is devoted to the life and work of the monastery's founders St. Neilos and St. Bartholomew, including kontakia in their honor, and an excerpt of a kanon for St. Benedict that was very likely composed for a Greek-rite all-night vigil at the Benedictine community at Montecassino in Sicily. Disc two features music for Pentecost, beginning with excerpts of its two kanons, the alleluiarion, and the communion verse for the feast. The central work on disc two is the Teleutaion (Final Antiphon) of the kneeling vespers in the medieval cathedral rite, featuring extended psalmody and ecstatic settings of the angelic refrain "Alleluia," foreshadowing the beautified ("kalophonic") chant of St. John Koukouzeles.
The booklet features a substantial essay on the music and its context by musicologist and Cappella Romana artistic director Dr. Alexander Lingas, and complete original texts in Greek with English translations by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash). Beautiful photography of the Byzantine Abbey of Grottaferrata, taken on Cappella Romana's tour there in May 2006, illustrates the booklet, as well as a sample of medieval Byzantine notation (as opposed to contemporary notation in the received tradition) drawn from the opening verse of the Teleutaion in the Grottaferrata manuscript Psaltikon Ashburnamensis 64. The CDs combined feature over 82 minutes of music.
Two CDs (CD1: The Founders of Grottaferrata; CD2: The Feast of Pentecost).
Cappella Romana Vocal Ensemble
Cappella Romana is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Click here for more information about Cappella Romana.
