Laus Polyphoniae 2024
“VOX\VOCES, monophonic\polyphonic”
Antwerp, Flanders
23 August – 1 September 2024
Antwerp’s annual Laus Polyphoniae festival, as the name suggests, is devoted to music from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, a period when polyphony was paramount. This year’s festival had the banner of VOX\VOCES, monophonic\polyphonic reflecting an investigation of links between monophonic and polyphonic music during the period. As usual, it was organised by AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp) from its base centred around the baroque St. Augustine Church in the centre of Antwerp. An introductory essay to the festival and clickable details of all the events can be found here. The festival lasted for 11 days, but I was only able to review the first four days. which included the International Young Artist’s Presentation (IYAP) on the first Saturday, reviewed here.
The start of the Renaissance is difficult to define. In organ music, around 1450 seems a reasonable date, with music from the likes of the Buxheimer Orgelbüch and the Faenza Codex combining elements of Medieval and Renaissance styles. By this stage, the organ had a fully chromatic keyboard, sometimes more than one manual, and independent stops were beginning to be separated out from the Medieval ‘Blockwerk’ – the equivalent of single mixture where one note plays a chorus of ten or more notes.
Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews + 