BRATTLEBORO — On Saturday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m., In Stile Moderno presents the second program of their 2018-19 season with “The Lily and the Rose: France and England Entwined,” at the Brattleboro Music Center, 72 Blanche Moyse Way.
This intimate Valentine's Day program for voice and lute features songs of love and loss from both sides of the English Channel.
Boston-based ensemble In Stile Moderno is dedicated to music of the seventeenth century, and combines fidelity to historical performance practice with a drive to make early music accessible and relevant to modern audiences.
Founded in 2012 in Basel, Switzerland, by Brattleboro native Nathaniel Cox and British-American soprano Agnes Coakley, the ensemble has gained a reputation for engaging performances and musicianship on the highest level.
“The Lily and the Rose” explores the cultural and musical connection between England and France in the early seventeenth century, inspired by the 1625 marriage of King Charles I to the French princess Henrietta Maria. The royal union created a surge of French influence in the English court, with a new taste for French music.
Exploring this era of cultural exchange, In Stile Moderno will feature works by Charles “Master of Music” Nicholas Lanier, court favorites William and Henry Lawes, and French composers Antoine Boësset and Etienne Moulinié, as well as several anonymous French and English pieces from English manuscripts of the era.
Presented with historical pronunciation of French and English and with the group's signature engaging style, the songs range from bawdy to sublime and from light-hearted to dramatic.