The vocal ensemble performed beautiful Franco-Flemish polyphony: music of Matthaeus Pipelare and Jean Mouton. Standing around a lectern, the ensemble sang from historical, early sixteenth-century notation using facsimile editions of the Mechelen Choirbook and one of the choirbooks of the Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap of ’s-Hertogenbosch.

Both manuscripts were produced in the workshop of Petrus Alamire, the music scribe from whom the Alamire Foundation takes its name. The facsimiles, which are made in full accordance with the original sources, are part of the Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile series, in which the Alamire Foundation publishes high quality reproductions of music manuscripts, each of which is accompanied by an extensive scholarly study written by leading experts. The most recent study by Eric Jas (University of Utrecht) is now available in our webshop. You can watch the performance of Cappella Pratensis here, starting with Pipelare's Missa Fors seulement as notated in the Mechelen Choirbook.