The manuscript (Ms. 9085) is one of the flagships of the Royal Library of Belgium’s collections. It is considered a treasure of Habsburg-Burgundian culture. This is not only due to its design – beautiful gold and silver ink sparkling on black parchment sheets – but also because it preserves an important tradition: the music and choreography of the basse danse, a type of courtly dance from the period around 1500. The Alamire Foundation made this production in collaboration with AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp) and several other partners, bringing the basse danse back to life with a top cast of dancers and musicians.

In the documentary-concert Basses Danses: From manuscript to reverence, Renaissance dance expert Véronique Daniels offers insights into the history of the dance, its steps and their reconstruction. Some dances from Margaret’s dance book are performed with musical accompaniment by the ensemble Oltremontano in the beautiful historic setting of AMUZ. The reconstruction of the music and dance draws on the expertise of specialists from Belgium and abroad: Adam Knight Gilbert, Adam Bregman, Wim Becu, Alain Christen, Marc Lewon, Clara Coutouly, Mara Winter, Elizabeth Sommers, Rotem Gilbert, Elisabeth Schollaert, Paul Kieffer and Marie-Ange Petit.

The release of this documentary-concert coincides with the start of Laus Polyphoniae, the unique early music festival in Antwerp, whose theme this summer, VOX\VOCES, focuses on the relationship between monophony and polyphony. Like the concerts in the festival, the documentary-concert also draws on this relationship. Indeed, the melodies in the Brussels manuscript were written in monophonic tenors with long notes, upon which musicians could improvise florid polyphony. In the Basses Danses documentary and the new docu-concert, now available on alamire.tv, you can discover more about the process for creating improvised polyphony from single melodies.