Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 5, 2007|Volume 36, Number 5

Pictured is a page of Antoine Busnois' "Bel acueil," from the Mellon Chansonnier (Italian, c. 1476), one of the works the Yale Collegium Musicum will be performing on Oct. 11.

Yale singers will bring Beinecke manuscript to musical life in ‘Beatrice’s Big Wedding’

Scholarship and musical expertise will combine in “Beatrice’s Big Wedding,” the first concert of the Yale Collegium Musicum series.

The concert will take place at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 11, at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St. This event is free and open to the public on a first-come basis; seating is limited.

The Collegium will perform music from the elaborately illuminated “Mellon Chansonnier,” which was donated to the Beinecke in 1940 by Paul Mellon, its last private owner. This volume is an anthology of music assembled around 1475 for the wedding of Beatrice of Aragon, the daughter of the King of Naples, to the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus. It contains masterpieces by Guillaume Dufay, Antoine Busnois, Jean de Ockeghem, and other composers of the late 15th century.

“This chansonnier is one of the gems of the Beinecke, and it is a joy to bring its music to life again,” says Robert Mealy, lecturer in music and director of the Yale Collegium Musicum. “The book was intended to accompany Beatrice in her journey to her new home in Hungary, where she and her husband would bring the new arts of humanism. It represents some of the finest music of the late 15th century, a highly refined polyphony that is all too rarely heard today.”

The Collegium concert is the culmination of several weeks of research and exploration on the part of undergraduates in “The Performance of Early Music,” a seminar led by Judith Malafronte, lecturer in music. The students had to learn how to decipher the notation of the “Mellon Chansonnier” to reveal its musical riches.

An array of professional instrumentalists will join the students in this concert, including experts on the shawm (the ancestor of the oboe), the sackbut (an early trombone), medieval harp, recorder and lute. Mealy, a specialist in early strings, will lead an ensemble of Yale players on medieval fiddles and early violas da gamba.

Several of the instrumentalists will join Mealy to deliver a pre-concert lecture at 4:30 p.m. on the Beinecke Library mezzanine. During the lecture, they will introduce the instruments to be played and speak about the process of reviving early music.

The Yale Collegium Musicum is dedicated to bringing early music to life through the use of historically informed techniques and performance practice. Sponsored by the Department of Music and supported by the Friends of Music at Yale, the Collegium is open to all members of the Yale community. It is directed by Mealy and Malafronte, both internationally acclaimed early musicians.

Two other Collegium concerts will take place this year: “Molière and his Musicians” on Feb. 21, and “The Grand Tour: Charles Burney and the Musical Landscape of 18th-Century Europe” on May 1. More information is available at www.library.yale.edu/beinecke or (203) 432-2977.

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