To Maria

Ars Nova Copenhagen invites you to a concert where the audience can immerse themselves in a world of sound, where the tempo slows down and listening takes centre stage.

We revolve around Mary – not as the centre of a narrative, but as the starting point for a musical presence that provides space for listening and contemplation.

In this concert, we find ourselves in a quiet interlude in the church year, shortly before Easter and close to the Annunciation, where something is still in the making. It is not the culmination of the story, but its prerequisite – a time of expectation, wonder and attention.

Here too, Mary is present in the stories, but without the prominent role she has in the Catholic tradition, where she has inspired some of the most beautiful works in music history. There will be no doubt about this after this concert with Ars Nova Copenhagen and Sofi Jeannin.

The programme spans more than five centuries, but revolves around the same presence. In the medieval pilgrim song Maria Matrem from Libre Vermell de Montserrat, we encounter a piety in motion – simple, repetitive, community-driven. Here, Mary is close rather than exalted, and the music seems created to accompany those who are on their way.

Renaissance Marian motets unfold this closeness in sound. In Heinrich Isaac’s Virgo prudentissima and Obrecht’s Salve Regina, there is time to linger: long lines, calm progressions, prayer without haste. The music creates a space where the listener can find room for calm and reflection.

The moment of the Annunciation comes to the fore more directly in Jamie Hall’s The Annunciation. With his contemporary musical language, Hall brings us close to the encounter between the message and the human being – a moment marked by silence, hesitation and acceptance.

In other recent works by Judith Weir, Kerensa Briggs and Margaret Rizza, the expression becomes more intense. In Rizza’s work, the music is carried by simplicity and repetition, inviting contemplation. Mary does not appear as a figure, but as a presence.

The concert is an invitation to let yourself be enveloped by this world of sound. To listen without haste. To make room for voices that are rarely heard clearly, but which continue to resonate in tradition.

Programme:

Anonymous, 12. c., Maria Matrem (from Libre Vermell)

Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450-1517), Virgo Prudentissima

Kerensa Briggs (b 1991), Alma redemptoris mater

Jacob Obrecht(1457-1505), Salve Regina

Jamie W. Hall (f. 1983), The annunciation

Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450-1521), Vultum tuum depracabantur

Judith Weir (b 1954), Ave Regina Caelorum

Cipriano De Rore (ca. 1515-1565), Ave Regina

Margaret Rizza (b. 1929), Ave Generosa

Anonymous, 12. c., Cuncti Simus Concanentes (from Libre Vermell)