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PROJECT DESCRIPTION

To celebrate our 10th anniversary in 2026, we will be recording our first album in December for CRD Records. Following a generous donation allowing us to perform the programme live at St Cecilia’s Music Museum, Edinburgh, we are seeking funding to build a four-stop tour of the programme, also including New College Oxford, Sheffield University and MUSICON Durham, in February 2026.

Using payment records from venetian theatres, we will be recording extracts from operas and cantatas, most of which have yet to be performed in modern times, with a band which matches that found in a venetian pit during the 1650s: two violins, bass viol, two theorbos, a single manual harpsichord and a pentagonal virginal. The programme itself is centred on works by three neglected composers – P.A Ziani, Il Rovettino and Francesco Lucio – placed alongside music by Francesco Cavalli and Barbara Strozzi. We are especially excited to be recording an overlooked cantata by Cavalli, which seems to have served as a model for some of his student Strozzi’s most famous works.

Given it is a rarity to find evidence of the exact nature of a plucked keyboard played during public performances of this period, it is particularly exciting to explore how the virginal – typically considered a purely domestic instrument – will function within our continuo, both when playing alone and as part of a tutti section. As part of this exploration, we have consulted every known treatise discussing continuo from the seventeenth century, and will be receiving coaching from Paula Chateauneuf, who conducted an AHRC-funded research project on continuo in mid-seventeenth century Italy from 2009-2012. Research on vocal treatises and on ornamentation for all instruments has also been conducted, with further coaching on ornamentation given by Oliver Webber. The result is a novel approach to affect, ornamentation and continuo realisation, with treatises from the second-half of the seventeenth century producing examples of realisation which are radically different from the sound we have come to expect.

Our tour is designed to showcase this research-led approach to performing music of this period, as well as rarely-heard repertoire, to audiences which will comprise a large number of students studying performance on historical instruments and musicology. At each venue, we will give informal workshops before the concert allowing audience members to engage more intimately with our research and the soundworld we have constructed. For Sheffield University and Durham’s MUSICON, we will be the only concert of professional early music offered in the 25/26 academic year, making these engagement opportunities especially important.

Staying true to our aim to make early music as accessible and engaging as possible, tickets will be affordably priced or free, and our emphasis on the historical context of performance designed to make rarely-heard music approachable and immersive even for those who are new to it.