UTOPIA ENSEMBLE - OUR LADY OF ANTWERP - A MUSICAL PATH TO RUBENS

Antwerp's collegiate church of Our Lady developed into one of the most important musical centres in the Low Countries over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. This recording traces the lineage of the directors of music and the singers associated with the church, the later cathedral. Their music illustrates how polyphony evolved from it's late mediaeval roots into the early Baroque period. Gregorian chants from the Antwerp tradition are included with the polyphonic works as a reminder of the daily services and their music: there was always singing in the chancel, in the chapels and at the services of brotherhoods and guilds that were spread throughout the day. The name and image of the Virgin Mary were present everywhere, not only in the church's liturgy but also in the daily life of the city. That same connection remains visible today in the many statues of Mary on facades and street corners - even on the facade of the Town Hall - and in the celebration of Mother's Day on the Feast of the Assumption. The programme concludes with the early Baroque period, the era in which Peter Paul Rubens was also active. Peter Philips' Assumpta est Maria shares the same artistic context as Rubens' monumental Assumption of the Virgin in it's place above the high altar of the cathedral of Antwerp.

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