Blue Heron (Vocal Ensemble) Podcast

This podcast episode features a pre-concert lecture by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Visiting Assistant Professor Myke Cuthbert. The music in this episode is from the live performance that followed the lecture. Recorded in November 2006.

Episode 5 features a pre-concert lecture by Blue Heron's Music Director, Scott Metcalfe. In his lecture, given on October 13, 2012, before a concert in Cambridge, Metcalfe took on a number of interesting topics. He discussed the works that were about to be given their North American Premieres (Ludford's Missa Inclina cor meum and Mason's Ave fuit prima salus), the history of the Peterhouse partbooks (which is the sole source of those pieces), why Blue Heron approaches this repertoire the way it does and finally "why music from the 16th century should be as captivating, varied and expressive as music from any other age." The lecture was supported in part by the Cambridge Society for Early Music. The Ludford and Mason works discussed in this lecture were recorded shortly after the premiere performances in October 2012, and will soon be released commercially on Blue Heron's own label, as Volume 3 of a planned set of 5 Peterhouse Partbooks recordings (BHCD1004; RELEASE DATE: October 2013). The disc will contain the world premiere recordings of all the music on the CD.

Episode 6 features a pre-concert talk by Scott Metcalfe given on February 3, 2018, in Cambridge. He discusses ideas about beauty and form presented in Robert Hass's A Little Book on Form (2017) and connects them to Blue Heron's work, pondering the issues raised by a 21st-century concert performance of a piece of late medieval music whose original purpose was to enhance a sacred liturgy.

Episode 3 features a pre-concert lecture by Dr. Douglas Kirk. All the music is from the live performance following the lecture, featuring Blue Heron, the Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble, and the Blue Heron Violin Band. Recorded in April 2008. This episode sponsored by the Cambridge Society for Early Music.

Episode 4 features a pre-concert lecture by Sean Gallagher, Visiting Associate Professor of Music (Musicology and Ethnomusicology) at Boston University. In his lecture, given on March 2, 2013, Prof. Gallagher discusses the brilliant 15th-century composer of vocal polyphony Johannes Ockeghem and his contemporaries, focusing in particular on the cultural and theological world in which they lived. The lecture was sponsored in part by the Cambridge Society for Early Music.