Date/Time
Date(s) - 21 Feb 2016
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location
The Cloisters
Category(ies) No Categories
Pomerium
Musical Games, Puzzles, and Riddles of the Renaissance
Courtly society in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance prized games, puzzles, and riddles. Composers found ways to participate in this culture by writing music that manipulated the rules of notation, sometimes taking a cue from verbal puns. Pomerium presents works from the Renaissance that exhibit compositional gamesmanship in structure or notated appearance. Works include Baude Cordier’s picture songs from about 1410, Antoine Busnoys’s Pythagorean motet of 1464 honoring Johannes Ockeghem and the slightly later bell motet honoring St. Anthony, Henricus Isaac’s “Silver and Gold” Mass (ca. 1500), and Josquin Desprez’s Mass of the Dice from the 1480s. The program concludes with the six-voice Agnus Dei from Josquin’sMissa Malheur me bat of around 1505, a tour de force of musical canons.
This program complements the exhibition The World in Play: Luxury Playing Cards (1430-1540), on view at The Cloisters from January 20 through April 17, 2016).
$40 ($20 student rate) at 1pm and 3pm on Sunday, February 21. Please visit www.metmuseum.org/cloisters for tickets.