Sean Gallagher on Ockeghem's "Fors Seullement l'actente" and its progeny

09/09/19 • 21 min

Professor Sean Gallagher, adviser to Blue Heron’s Ockeghem@600 project, introduces the seventh program in the series, featuring Johannes Ockeghem’s song "Fors seullement l’actente" and a number of pieces based on it, including three Mass movements by Ockeghem himself and works by Pierre de la Rue and others. Prof. Gallagher also discusses the other music on the program—the song "Je ne vis onques la pareille" (probably by Gilles Binchois) and music by Alexander Agricola and Johannes Ghiselin based on it.

Previous Episode

Performing Late Medieval Music in The Modern Day

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.