European Early Music Day
Today, 21 March, is European Early Music Day: a date marked annually on the calendar by the Réseau Européen de Musique Ancienne (REMA). Since 2022, the Alamire Foundation has been a member of this umbrella organisation, which represents the rich diversity of the early music sector through its 216 partners across 29 countries.
European Early Music Day is the perfect moment to highlight the variety and vitality of early music. Early Music is anything but dusty nostalgia: it thrives as living European heritage. Curiosity, research, and artistic exploration drive an international network of festivals, concert venues, scholars, and performers active in the field. As one small part of this ecosystem, the Alamire Foundation is proud to help ensure that the music of the past resonates meaningfully in the present.
To celebrate this day, the Alamire Foundation is launching a brand-new digital platform on the Integrated Database for Early Music (IDEM). From now on, the editions in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile (LLMF) and Monumenta Flandriae Musica will be accessible online through the database’s publications section. In this way, IDEM continues to grow into a comprehensive online reference library for Early Music, opening up both past and present research to a wide audience.
On the occasion of European Early Music Day, you can now consult the most recent study in the LLMF series, Madrigal Collections from the Low Countries in Central Europe, on this platform. This edition, edited by research officer Antonio Chemotti under the general editorship of David Burn and Bart Demuyt, focuses on a set of printed partbooks containing five collections of Italian madrigals. The source, currently preserved in the library of the University of Warsaw, was originally published in Antwerp by Pierre Phalèse the Younger and Jean Bellère in the 1590s.
The study aligns with the growing musicological interest in the material characteristics of individual copies of printed books. In addition, it represents an important step in the reappraisal of musical sources preserved in countries of the former Warsaw Pact.
The Alamire Digital Lab digitized the partbooks a few years ago in Warsaw. You can view the images here.