In order to put the wonderful music from Petrus Alamire’s manuscripts back in the spotlight, the media installation Speculum Musurgica (Rudi Knoops) will be set up in Mechelen's St Rumbold's Cathedral from 6 to 28 January in conjunction with the EU Presidency.

The Alamire Foundation and Brussels Airlines are joining forces to promote the magnificent musical heritage of the Low Countries internationally–and up in the air. Starting in  December 2023, Alamire Foundation audiovisual productions (documentaries and docu-concerts) will be available on all Brussels Airlines intercontinental flights via the Inflight Entertainment Program.

The Alamire Foundation welcomes a renowned clavichord to its growing collection of historical musical instruments. Our new acquisition is a replica of a Philipp Jacob Specken (1690-1762) instrument by the Flemish builder Joris Potvlieghe. The clavichord was acquired by the Alamire Foundation from the collection of Jos van Immerseel. It has been used in concert by András Schiff and Gustav Leonhardt.

Following the overwhelming success of the documentary Basses Danses, the Alamire Foundation has once again partnered with the Royal Library of Belgium to produce an in-depth documentary and publish a unique facsimile and study in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile. It concerns one of the masterpieces of the Royal Library’s collection: Benedictus Appenzeller's canon Sancta Maria succurre miseris, which was printed on a linen tablecloth in 1548 as a gift to Mary of Hungary.

The Alamire Foundation Editions series is enriched by a new CD recording. In the second volume, the ensemble Ratas del Viejo Mundo performs the music that resounded at the Farnese court in Parma. Sixteenth-century Parma was a leading musical centre that attracted renowned Italian and Franco-Flemish composers such as Rore, Merulo, Persoens, and Wert. This new recording presents the perfect embodiment of the beautiful polyphony we associate with the Farnese court.

On 5 and 6 June, musicologist Fabrice Fitch (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) was at the House of Polyphony for a lab on Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Scaramella with the Alamire Foundation’s house ensemble, Park Collegium. The four-part mass survives uniquely in a set of partbooks for which only two of the original four books survive. Fitch was completing a reconstruction of the two missing voices, and the lab considered notation, text, and music in the surviving and reconstructed voices. On Tuesday 6 June , members of the public were invited to join Fitch and Park Collegium for an informal open session, presenting some of the work completed over the course of the lab.

From 27 June to 20 July, Jennifer Bloxam, Professor of Music Emerita at Williams College (USA), was in the House of Polyphony as part of a residency. Continuing a close collaboration with the Alamire Foundation that has been ongoing for many years now, she joined the vocal ensemble Cappella Pratensis and the wind ensemble I Fedeli, together with organist Wim Diepenhorst, to explore Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Sub tuum praesidium, culminating in a brand new scholarly performance this summer during Laus Polyphoniae

On Thursday 9 November, on the occasion of the New Horizons / Dieric Bouts Festival, a festive concert took place in St Peter's Church in Leuven featuring music by contemporaries of the painter Dieric Bouts (c. 1430-1475), performed by Oltremontano, Cappella Pratensis, and Diskantores / Park Collegium.

The Alamire Foundation has created an innovative sound installation in Park Abbey that forms part of the New Horizons | Dieric Bouts Festival. The installation goes under the name GAUDE, referring to the processional hymn Gaude redempta on a text by Gilles Carlier and music by Guillaume Du Fay, which forms the basis of the installation. The installation was built in the abbey's corridor and can be visited from 7 December - 4 February 2024.

Over the course of two clavichord concerts on 23 and 28 November in the PARCUM Museumzaal programmed around "la choix du maître", Jos van Immerseel played a historical replica built by Joris Potvlieghe from the collection of the Alamire Foundation.

On Friday, November 24, the Bib Leuven Tweebronnen gave an exceptional screening of two documentary-concerts from the MISSE JOSQUIN series as part of the New Horizons | Dieric Bouts Festival.

The Integrated Database for Early Music (IDEM) underwent an important update. Thanks to the integration of a new data model, sources are now described in more detail both formally and substantively.

From 28 to 31 March, an international conference on Josquin des Prez was held in Rome and Vatican City on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the composer’s death. The conference was planned for 2021 but had to be postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the Josquin conference in Rome, the official video channel of the Alamire Foundation, alamire.tv, was launched. The first series to appear on this channel was MISSE JOSQUIN, a twelve-part documentary-concert series on the masses that can be attributed with certainty to Josquin des Prez. The documentary on Petrus Alamire followed a few months later.

Ten years after the start of the digitization project in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 14,000 images have been fully studied by the Alamire Foundation’s team and were made available for consultation on the Integrated Database for Early Music.

The Alamire Foundation created its own label Alamire Foundation Editions in cooperation with Passacaille. The first releases were the non-commercial, limited-edition DVDs of MISSE JOSQUIN, and the CD of Cappella Mariana Johannes Tourout: Portrait of an Imperial Cantor.

Start of the FED-tWIN programme From Script to Sound. Connecting Heritage and Art through Research and Technology. The project frames a long-term collaboration between the Alamire Foundation and the Royal Library of Belgium and aims to unlock and valorize musical heritage from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through multidisciplinary and innovative research. The study and interpretation within the broader context of the handwritten and printed heritage of the Burgundian-Habsburg Low Countries will considerably increase the scope and impact of this cultural capital.

The international conference New Perspectives in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Music Notations took place in Leuven from 4 to 7 May in cooperation with the KU Leuven Department of Musicology and the Royal Library of Belgium.

From 26 to 27 May, a conference was held in Parma as part of the project The Court of the Farnese in Parma and Flanders in which the Alamire Foundation, in cooperation with the Flemish Representation in Italy, also organizes a lecture-performance and concerts in Leuven, Antwerp, Parma, and New York.

On the occasion of the research project on the basse danse Manuscript of Margaret of Austria (B-Br-ms 9085), funded by the VGP Foundation, the Alamire Foundation produces a new documentary on the dance book.

Silentii, an Alamire Foundation multimedia project developed in cooperation with Park Abbey, PARCUM, and Visit Leuven was developed at the Library of Voices by media artist-staff member Rudi Knoops as part of the research project The Sound of Music.

After the entirely virtual edition of Laus Polyphoniae 2020, the 2021 summer festival was a hybrid event dedicated entirely to the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin des Prez. The Alamire Foundation provided the musicological basis for the festival and launched the twelve-part series of documentary-concerts 'MISSE JOSQUIN', dedicated to the twelve masses that can be attributed to Josquin with certainty.

The Alamire Foundation was selected as one of the City of Leuven’s Creative Ambassadors. In the publication Leuven?! Unveiling a Creative City in 8 Stories, the eight ambassadors were introduced in a series of interviews.

The Alamire Foundation was awarded the Society Award 2021 of the Humanities and Social Sciences Group, together with the KU Leuven Musicology Research Group and Matrix.

On May 20, the facsimile of and study on the Mechelen Choirbook (B-MEa ss) was presented during an international webinar organized by the Department of European Studies at Columbia University (New York) in collaboration with the Alamire Foundation. The Mechelen Choirbook, the only Alamire manuscript still preserved in the city for which it was produced, was the third volume to appear in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile.

Start of the project Lost in Translation?, a multidisciplinary collaboration between musicologists, musicians, translation scholars, (literary) historians, and database specialists that will focus on mapping out multilingualism in the songs’ material sources, within the song repertory itself, and in the circulation of both. In IDEM, a new module will be built to process these data and to make them accessible for use by researchers and performers.

Start of the VGP-Foundation funded Basses Danses-project in collaboration with the Royal Library of Belgium, which will focus on the famous Basses Danses-manuscript of Margaret of Austria (B-Br 9085). The Alamire Foundation and the Royal Library of Belgium will carry out thorough research on this manuscript and will publish a new, high-quality facsimile in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile.

In 2020, both the acoustic model and the three-dimensional model of the Nassau Chapel of the Royal Library of Belgium were measured. In 2021, the first steps were taken to implement this acoustic model in the Alamire Interactive Sound Lab. The evaluation of this implementation was linked to the residency of the Prague ensemble Cappella Mariana in November 2021. During an intensive lab in the Library of Voices, Cappella Mariana entered dialogue with the acoustics of the Nassau Chapel as implemented in the Alamire Interactive Sound Lab.

Fragments containing liturgical music, presumably dating from the twelfth century, were added to the collection of the Library of Voices.

The visit on 4 February of Her Majesty Queen Mathilde to the Alamire Foundation marked the continuation of the high level of protection of the royal family, initiated in 2011 by the presence of Her Majesty Queen Fabiola at the opening of the House of Polyphony.

After the preparatory work in 2019, a series of measurements of acoustic models of several historically significant spaces began in 2020, as part of the SBO-project The Sound of Music.

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, PLAN IDEM was rolled out, focusing on systematically making a corpus of around sixty sources available, described in detail in terms of content and form.

In late 2020, Brabants Historisch Informatiecentrum Ms. 155 (olim 72C), a choirbook made in the workshops of Petrus Alamire for the Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap (Confraternity of Our Illustrious Lady) in ’s-Hertogenbosch, was published as a facsimile edition in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile, in partnership with the ensemble Cappella Pratensis and the Confraternity.

The Alamire Foundation was commissioned by Kunstenpunt Vlaanderen (Flanders Art Institute) to compile an updated version of the Guide to Early Music. The worldwide launch coincided with the virtual REMA European Early Music Summit on 21 and 22 November. By way of an introduction and in-depth discussion of the content, Bart Demuyt and Pieter Mannaerts wrote an overarching essay, Guide to Early Music in Flanders: From Historically Informed Performance to Historically Informed Experience.

For PolyphonyConnects, the virtual edition of the Laus Polyphoniae festival, the Alamire Foundation produced two documentaries, on the Leuven Chansonnier and the life and work of Petrus Alamire. The scientifically substantiated discourse was supported by a combination of musical performance, images from related manuscripts and explanations by renowned researchers and performers.

In 2020, KBR opened a museum connected to the library, which is dedicated to the book collection of the Burgundian dukes. The Alamire Foundation acted as a partner for the development of the music-related aspects and initiatives. In 2019, several consultations were held between the partners on matters such as the choice of suitable audio fragments linked to specific themes in the museum layout.

The instrument collection at the House of Polyphony was extended by purchasing a replica of an Italian harpsichord by Giuseppe Mondini (1700, J. Boon, made in 2004). The Alamire Foundation also received a replica of a small Italian Ottavino spinet by Franciscus Patavinus (Venice, 1527), donated by its maker Jan Boon.

A digitization campaign in Bruges was a response to the request from the Honourable Confraternity of the Holy Blood for musicological expertise and collaboration. This resulted in the digitized images of the illuminated sixteenth-century processional held at the Museum of the Basilica of the Holy Blood (Ms. 15), and images of musical sources in the City Archives.

As part of the expansion of the documentation centre in the Library of Voices, the Alamire Foundation began mapping its rich collection of both professional literature and source publications. In addition to its own systematically built-up library collection, this collection also includes donations. In particular, it concerns the Musica / Herman Baeten, Fred Schneyderberg, and Dirk Snellings collections.

At the end of 2020, the Alamire Foundation and the Centrum Gregoriaans vzw in Drongen concluded agreements with a view to the donation of three collections concerning plainchant, namely the private collections of Bart Guns and the late Frans Mariman, as well as the collection of the Brussels Académie du Chant Grégorien.

In 2019, the restored St. Norbert’s Gatehouse at Park Abbey, which houses the Library of Voices, was nominated by a professional jury for the Immovable Heritage Award of the Flemish Government. Following a poll (with more than 6,000 votes cast), the public prize was awarded to this repurposing project by the Alamire Foundation.

The integration of the Renaissance Music Archive (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was completed. This project includes approximately 1,700 files containing information about manuscripts with polyphonic music preserved in collections around the world.

After visiting Beverley (UK) in 2017 and Bourg-en-Bresse (FR) in 2018, the exhibition Petrus Alamire - Polyphony in the Picture was mounted at the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome from 25 February to 25 March, under the title L’arte musicale della polifonia fiamminga – un’esperienza multimediale. The exhibition coincided with the inauguration of the General Delegation of the Flemish Government in Italy.

In the context of the Third KU Leuven Seminar on Innovation, Research & Development, organized in Tokyo by KU Leuven in partnership with its alumni association Chapter Japan and the Belgian Embassy on 12 November, Bart Demuyt gave a lecture entitled Polyphonic Early Music and Technology. Unlocking Musical Heritage through Innovative Methods. This was followed by a concert by Sollazzo Ensemble, with a selection of songs from the Leuven Chansonnier.

In the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile, the study and facsimile of the Mechelen Choirbook was published. The manuscript from the Mechelen City Archives’ collection is permanently on display – either the original or the facsimile published by the Alamire Foundation – in the space for which the Foundation has provided the concept, in collaboration with the curators.

Led by Jennifer Bloxam (Williams College, US) and with assistance from the Cappella Pratensis singers, thirty researchers, musicians and music lovers studied the phenomenon of the 'Golden Mass'.

The performance of all the compositions in the Leuven Chansonnier during the Laus Polyphoniae 2018 festival resulted in the production of the first of four CDs that will make the entire chansonnier accessible in audible form. The songs were performed by the Sollazzo Ensemble and produced by the label Passacaille, in partnership with the Centre culturel de rencontre et Festival d’Ambronay.

A processional printed in 1620 at the Officina Plantiniana with handwritten notes was added to the collection of the Library of Voices.

The Library of Voices opened its doors, a global headquarters for practice-oriented research on vocal and instrumental music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In 2014, carillon culture was recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage. The Alamire Foundation has taken on the task of making the entire corpus of manuscripts accessible in which this music has been preserved. To this end, digital images were taken by the Alamire Digital Lab in the City Archives of Mechelen and Ghent in 2018.

The facsimile and the study of the Alamire choirbook ms. 215-16 of the Royal Library of Belgium was published in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile.

During the Song Lab held on 23 and 24 February, an international working group of musicologists and musicians studied the Leuven Chansonnier with a specific aim: a scientifically substantiated transcription of the twelve unique pieces preserved in the manuscript (both music and text).

In anticipation of the world première of the performance of the entire Leuven Chansonnier on 25 August, a follow-up conference was organized as part of the Laus Polyphoniae festival (on 23 and 24 August). This was followed by the live performance on 25 August by four different ensembles.

Following the Leuven Chansonnier in 2017, the King Baudouin Foundation entrusted the Alamire Foundation with a second manuscript, a Dominican antiphonary—purchased at Arenberg Auctions—dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.

The installation POLYPHONY UNRAVELLED 5.1.3 was made for the Museum Hof van Busleyden. It was designed for this project around a special recording by Park Collegium of two Kyries (one from a mass by Pierre de la Rue and the other from the opening mass by Matthaeus Pipelare).

For the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Pierre de la Rue, the Alamire Foundation and the Musicology Research Group of KU Leuven organized in Mechelen an international conference to shed light on the state of affairs in research and sketch out new possibilities.

A three-day symposium, Tempus fugit, was held at which musicologists, conductors and performers explored aspects of 'time in polyphony'.

The Alamire Digital Lab was flown to Halifax (Canada) for the digitization of an antiphonary originating at the Cistercian convent in Salzinnes, near Namur in Belgium (now preserved in the Patrick Power Library at Saint-Mary's University, Halifax). The digital images were integrated into the exhibition Centuries of Silence: The Discovery of the Salzinnes Antiphonal (Art Gallery of Nova Scotia), along with recordings of music from the manuscript.

The exhibition Petrus Alamire – Polyphony in the Picture was exhibited in the Minster of Beverley (UK), thus beginning its international tour.

Announcement of the discovery of the Leuven Chansonnier at a press conference in the House of Polyphony. This major source was purchased by the Belgian King Baudouin Foundation and presented to the Alamire Foundation on permanent loan. The press conference at the House of Polyphony was followed by the public presentation of the manuscript on Flanders Day at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, and by a study day at Flanders House.

The Alamire Foundation launched the series it coordinates, the Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile, with the publication of the Leuven Chansonnier.

A unique, original organ dating from 1713 was purchased, taking its place next to a restored cabinet-organ from the Low Countries, previously donated to the Alamire Foundation. Both organs represent important new additions to the collection of historical instruments held in the House of Polyphony. This collection not only serves to document and preserve musical heritage but has a primary function in performance and research through practice. The collection’s replica of the Gothic organ (based on a Hugo van der Goes painting) was played in St. James’ Church in Antwerp as part of the 2017 edition of the Laus Polyphoniae festival.

The Alamire Foundation digitized and incorporated into its collection the complete Renaissance Archive of the School of Music, created at the University of Illinois. This archive, compiled by Herbert Kellman (senior fellow of the Alamire Foundation) includes one of the world’s most important collections of unpublished information on polyphony sources.

The Alamire Digital Lab continued to be used for digitization at the Royal Library of Belgium. A total of 10,112 images were made from 34 different sources. All of these are complete manuscripts or fragments of codices containing Gregorian music.

The Alamire Foundation contributed to the development of the musical section of the Teseum (the 'Music Box'), opening in 2016. Five manuscripts to be exhibited were selected from the collection at the Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren. All five were digitized by the Alamire Digital Lab in their entirety. All texts for the audio guide to the musical section of the museum were delivered, and the Alamire Foundation helped to design the artistic concept of an installation to evoke the performance of both plainchant and polyphonic music in Tongeren. Both audio and video recordings were made for this purpose featuring the ensembles Psallentes and Cappella Pratensis.

The second phase of digitization with the Alamire Digital Lab at the Royal Library of Belgium began, with a focus on the rich collection of plainchant manuscripts preserved in the Manuscripts Department.

In partnership with AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp), the Alamire Foundation organized the exhibition Petrus Alamire – Polyphony in the Picture. This was complemented by the 2015 edition of the Laus Polyphoniae festival, which was entirely devoted to music from the Alamire manuscripts. The global conference New Perspectives in Polyphony was also held on the same theme.

The manuscript known as the Imhof Prayerbook, on loan for the exhibition in Antwerp because of the connection with Petrus Alamire, was entirely digitized.

The Integrated Database for Early Music (IDEM) was put online. This web-platform makes digitized manuscripts containing music from the Low Countries available to a global audience, facilitating further valorization.

The Alamire Foundation was contributing partner for the exhibition on the Ghent Altarpiece, Mystieke Muziek (Mystical Music), in the Provincial Cultural Centre Caermersklooster in Ghent.

In 2014, editing of the first volume of the Inventarisatie van antifonaria bewaard in Vlaanderen (Inventory of Antiphonaries held in Flanders) was completed. It was published in the spring of 2015, containing the descriptions of the manuscripts in Averbode, Tongeren, Ghent, Geel, and Dendermonde.

The Alamire Digital Lab digitized a recently discovered sixteenth-century processional from the Beguinage in Turnhout. The project around this major Flemish heritage was made possible thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. The plainchant in this source was recorded in its entirety by the ensemble Psallentes.

The confrontation between research into the anonymous masses in manuscripts by Petrus Alamire and their performance by two early music ensembles (Thamyris and Tout Venant) led to a series of workshops on the anonymous Missa Salve regina.

A collection of nineteenth-century carillon manuscripts was digitized in partnership with Museum Vleeshuis – Sound of the City.

In the context of the Cantus Sororum research, about a hundred liturgical manuscripts (mainly antiphonaries, graduals, hymnals, and processionals) from the library of Maria Refugie Abbey (Uden) were studied and inventoried.

On 26 March, Prof. Honey Meconi led a workshop entitled Authenticity in La Rue’s Secular Music at the House of Polyphony, discussing manuscript 9814 from the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. She worked with Park Collegium led by Stratton Bull to research the repertoire in VienNB 9814, in particular an anonymous song, Plus oultre pretens parvenir.

Several lab sessions were held at the House of Polyphony from 4 to 6 January as part of Joshua Rifkin’s Senior Fellowship. Rifkin worked there with Cappella Pratensis on motets from codex 27088, held by the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels, a manuscript that was digitized as part of the project Straight from the Source.

In a music lab on William Byrd, three singers from Park Collegium sang the Mass for Three Voices by William Byrd. Using facsimiles of the sixteenth-century printed scores, the singers mainly experiment with tempo to accentuate the declamation of the text.

First phase of the partnership between the Alamire Foundation and the Royal Library of Belgium. The digitization (using the Alamire Digital Lab) of all the manuscripts containing polyphony that are held in the library resulted in approximately 8,000 images.

The Alamire Foundation signed a unique joint venture agreement with the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. This enabled the Foundation to start digitizing, studying, and describing the manuscripts in the Vatican library containing polyphony that can be linked to the Low Countries (late fourteenth to early seventeenth centuries). The first digitization campaign resulted in approximately 14,000 images. The project was supported by the Flemish Ministry of Culture and KU Leuven.

The House of Polyphony consolidated its status as an international platform through the organization of music labs and workshops. Renowned experts lead these sessions, including the American musicologist, pianist, and conductor, Joshua Rifkin, the director of the Early Music department at the University of Southern California, Adam Gilbert, and the specialist in the music of Pierre de la Rue, Honey Meconi.

The Alamire Foundation, Villarte, and Musica worked together on the first edition of the biannual festival Canto Aperto.

The colloquium Music and Theology in the European Reformations was held from 19 to 21 September, bringing together theologists, historians, bible scholars, and musicologists to explore the relationship between music and theology in the sixteenth century.

Working with Cappella Pratensis, the Alamire Foundation was a partner in the project 'Production and Reading of Music Sources' (PRoMS), an initiative targeting the codicology of all sources of polyphony in the period 1450-1530.

Start of the Alamire Digital Lab, equipped with high-tech apparatus for the digitization of musical heritage in manuscripts and printed documents.

In partnership with M - Museum Leuven, the Alamire Foundation organized the exhibition Divine Sounds. Seven Centuries of Gregorian Chant Manuscripts in Flanders. The Voices of Passion festival connected seamlessly to this exhibition with a focus on plainchant and the incorporation of monophonic hymns into the fifteenth and sixteenth-century polyphony of the Low Countries.

The inventory of the Museum Plantin-Moretus and the “Gautier” manuscript were digitized (in partnership with WenK – Lemmensinstituut).

The manuscripts on display at the Divine Sounds exhibition were digitized by the Alamire Digital Lab. These included the codex from Dendermonde Abbey containing work by Hildegard von Bingen. This iconic manuscript, which plays a key role in the music history of the Middle Ages, was made available for consultation online for the first time in the Integrated Database for Early Music. The first CD in a series that contains all the music in the manuscript, recorded by Psallentes, was presented in 2017. A faithful reproduction of the manuscript will later appear in the series Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile.

The House of Polyphony was inaugurated, based on a joint venture between the Alamire Foundation, KU Leuven, and the City of Leuven.

Three sessions on the study day Muziek uit Portugal en de Lage Landen: een dubbelportret (Music from Portugal and the Low Countries: a double portrait) – interwoven with the Laus Polyphoniae Sunday concerts – considered the links between early music in Portugal and in the Low Countries.

The large-scale IWT/SBO project New Perspectives on Polyphony, involving four years of research and valorization, commenced.

The conference Music for the Office and Its Sources in the Low Countries (1050-1550) was held from 21 to 23 August to coincide with the annual early music festival Laus Polyphoniae. The conference discussed musical sources and repertoire for church services in the Low Countries.

The international colloquium Miniatures and Music at the Court of Anjou was held from 1 to 2 November in partnership with Illuminare. The Alamire Digital Lab took this opportunity to photograph the entire Anjou Bible. The musical repertoire was also given a place at the Voices of Passion festival.

From 16 to 18 January, the Alamire Foundation organized the conference Cantus ecclesiasticum ut ornaret. Polyphony for the Proper of the Mass in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, for the 500th anniversary of the creation of several extraordinary choir music cycles for the mass proper by Heinrich Isaac.

As part of the exhibition Charles the Bold: Splendour of the Burgundian Court, the Groeningen Museum (Bruges) and the Alamire Foundation organized the international colloquium The Splendour of Burgundy. A Multidisciplinary Approach (in collaboration with Concertgebouw Brugge and Radboud University Nijmegen).

The Alamire Foundation embarked upon a structural partnership with AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp). In the context of the annual festival Laus Polyphoniae, this led to the co-production The Cappella Sistina and the Low Countries.

First edition of the annual festival Voices of Passion, in partnership with the cultural centre 30CC in Leuven.

On 9 June 2009, a symposium was organized to prepare for the International Early Music Day 2013 on Hendrik van Veldeke.

Publication of the first issue of the Journal of the Alamire Foundation, a periodical devoted to music and performance practice related to the Low Countries.

Initiation of the project Straight from the Source. The Late-Medieval Music Manuscript as Entry Point into the Musical Culture of the Low Countries. This project, directed by the Alamire Foundation and conducted in Flanders, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, aims to localize, inventory, and valorize the Low Countries’ musical heritage from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Special attention goes to the manuscripts produced in the workshops of Petrus Alamire.

Nam et illic Musae habitant. Music and the Teutonic Order: the project commissioned by the Landcommanderij Alden Biesen, Festival of Flanders Limburg, and Musica included a biographical and bibliographical report, the compilation of a cultural and historical exhibition (The Muses Live Here Too! Music and the Teutonic Order), and an international scientific colloquium.

From 29 to 31 October, the Alamire Foundation organized the international conference Music Sources in Private and Civic Contexts (circa 1480-1550), with a focus on musical sources of polyphony and monody owned by private individuals or civic organizations such as guilds and confraternities.

A biographical and bibliographical report was drawn up, commissioned by Laus Polyphoniae (Festival of Flanders Antwerp), offering an overview of the Papal Chapel and its musical significance.

On 15 October 2007, the F. Schneyderberg Gregorian Library moved from the Old Abbey in Drongen to the Tabularium in the University Library.

The Alamire Foundation was commissioned by the City of Ghent (Mozart Festival 2006) to draw up an initial overall inventory of composers originating from or active in the Low Countries in the second half of the eighteenth century, i.e., a biography and bibliography of Mozart’s contemporaries in the Southern Netherlands.

A biographical and bibliographical report was drawn up, commissioned by Laus Polyphoniae (Festival of Flanders Antwerp), offering an overview of the general literature on the history, economic significance and cultural landscape of the Hanseatic League (eleventh-seventeenth century). An international colloquium, Music in the Hanseatic Cities, followed during the Laus Polyphoniae edition of 2008.

A biographical and bibliographical report was drawn up on Music and the Teutonic Order, commissioned by Early Music Day – Alden Biesen.

A research project focusing on the polyphonic sacred music repertory in northern France in the period between about 1370 and 1550 resulted in a series of four exhibitions. Grouped under the title Cantus21. Patrimoine musical du Nord de la France, these events took place simultaneously in Cambrai, Douai, and Bailleul. To reinforce this exhibition project, the international colloquium Ars musica septentrionalis was organized from 24 to 26 November. These initiatives resulted in the monograph Mémoires du chant. Le livre de musique d’Isidore de Séville à Edmond de Coussemaker.

Start of the research into the Songbook of Zeghere van Male (F-CA 125-128).

The inventorying of the music fragments in the Tongeren City Archives, the State Archives in Hasselt, and the manuscripts at Tongeren Basilica were completed. A publication of the inventory followed, with an introduction to medieval heritage in Tongeren and the surrounding region.

As part of the covenant with Resonant, the inventorying of the music collection at the Beguinage Museum in Turnhout was finalized.

From 26 to 28 August, the Alamire Foundation organized the International Colloquium Jacob Obrecht: The Quincentenary Conference, to mark the 500th anniversary of the composer’s death.

The exhibition Klanken voor de kathedraal (Sounds for the Cathedral) on the musical heritage of St. Bavo’s in Ghent ran from 19 September to 9 October.

The Alamire Foundation was co-organizer of the exhibition Petrus Phalesius and Urban Music Life in the Flemish Renaissance City of Leuven.

Start of the FWO (Scientific Research Fund) study of the plainchant of secular clerics in the Low Countries: Music and Liturgy at the Collegial Church of Our Lady in Tongeren (fourteenth-fifteenth century). This was the first research project studying plainchant in Flanders.

With the support of the Alamire Foundation, the Belgian part of the international 'Motet Project' (The Motet Database Catalogue Online) came into effect. A team of American and European scientists focused on the description of various data for all existing motets up to the beginning of the seventeenth century.

A scientific text edition was published of a unique fifteenth century archival source, which contains a detailed description of the most important processions at St. Bavo’s Abbey in Ghent and the music that accompanied them.

A study was made of the music history of the collegiate churches of St. Géry and Sainte-Croix, based on a systematic study of the acta capituli of these churches in the period between about 1450 and 1550. In 2004, the passages dealing with music and musical life were transcribed.

The classification and inventorying of the music fund of St. Nicholas’ Church in Ghent, loaned to the Alamire Foundation in 2002, was completed with a publication of the inventory accompanied by an extensive scientific introduction.

The Alamire Foundation worked on the development of Muziekbank Vlaanderen (Flanders Music Database) in partnership with Resonant. This database identifies Flemish music collections in a uniform manner, in accordance with international archival standards.

On 30 and 31 August, the Alamire Foundation organized an international colloquium for the 400th anniversary of the death of Philippus de Monte. It focused on de Monte’s oeuvre and his musical career from Mechelen to Vienna and Prague. The results of the conference were published in Volume 8 of the series Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation.

The Alamire Foundation was one of the initiators of the concert series Foi, a close collaboration between Les Ballets C. de la B. and Capilla Flamenca. The Foundation was involved in the initial musicological research and first selection of the music to be included (specifically the Ghent Ars Nova fragments).

From 1 to 8 August, the Alamire Foundation organized the Seventeenth International Conference of the International Musicological Society, attended by leading scientists in the field of musicology. More than 650 papers were presented at 165 sessions; a selection of these was subsequently published in Volume 7 of the series Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation.

The Foundation also organized various concurrent events, including the exhibition of 'forgotten' music collections from the Low Countries in Bedreigde Klanken II (Sounds at Risk II, Leuven University Library) and ten unique concerts. One of the highlights of its valorization work during the congress was the walking concert by Capilla Flamenca and Psallentes, respectively singing on the rood screen and in the choir of St. Peter’s Church in Leuven, to give the audience an exceptional sense of the spatial effect of the performance.

From 14 to 16 December, a colloquium was dedicated to the topic of Bruges – Venice: Music in Two Urban Mosaics. The focus was on the rich history of the two metropolises Bruges and Venice, which have often been compared to each other in the past. Seven papers appeared in Volume 6 of the series Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation.

The exhibition Muziek in de achttiende-eeuwse Sint-Baafskathedraal (Music in the Eighteenth-Century St. Bavo’s Cathedral) took place in Ghent from 1 to 14 October.

The international colloquium Six Centuries of Musical Life in Brussels was held in Brussels from 19 to 21 October in cooperation with Brussel 2000 and H. Vanhulst (Universit. Libre de Bruxelles).

The international colloquium Brussels, Royal Library, MS II 270: Dutch and Latin Polyphonic Songs from the Low Countries (circa 1500) was held in Leuven from 29 to 30 December.

The Alamire Foundation organized the exhibition Alamire’s Treasury. Music and Miniatures from Charles V’s Time (1500-1535) in the Predikherenkerk in Leuven. In the same year, the theme of this exhibition devoted to Alamire’s manuscripts was explored in greater depth at the international colloquium The Burgundian-Habsburg Court Complex of Music Manuscripts (1500-1535) and the Workshop of Petrus Alamire. A wide selection of the papers presented was published in Volume 5 of the Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation series.

The exhibition at the State Archives in Brussels, Laus Deo. Pax vivis. Over het muziekleven aan de Vlaamse kapittelkerken en kathedralen tot circa 1800 (On musical life in the Flemish collegiate churches and cathedrals until circa 1800) ran from 5 March until 30 May.

The international colloquium on Chant and Polyphony took place in Leuven from 20 to 21 November.

In 1997, two international colloquia took place. The first one was organized in Brussels on February 11 and 12 with the title The Di Martinelli Music Dynasty and Their Music Collection. On October 24 and 25, the second colloquium was based in Leuven and was dedicated to the topic of Musical Life at the Collegiate Churches in the Low Countries and Europe from the Fourteenth Century until 1797.

Publication of the first volume of Monumenta Flandriae Musica, a series of modern critical editions and transcriptions of unpublished Flemish music from the Middle Ages to circa 1800. Each volume is accompanied by a scholarly introduction with information on the historical context and performance practice, and a text edition.

The international colloquium Giaches de Wert (1535–1596) and His Time. Migration of Musicians to and from the Low Countries (circa 1400–1600) took place in Antwerp from 26 to 28 August.

Year of publication of the first Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation. These yearbooks were mainly structured around one or more musicological themes, with papers presented at international colloquia organized by the Alamire Foundation. An international reading committee guaranteed the quality of the publications.

The exhibition Bedreigde Klanken? (Sounds At Risk?) in Landcommanderij Alden Biesen ran from 29 April to 25 June. On 23 June, the international colloquium Music Fragments and Manuscripts in the Low Countries took place.

The international colloquium Orlandus Lassus and His Time took place from 24 to 26 August. This was the first congress of the Alamire Foundation in Elzenveld, Antwerp, in cooperation with Laus Polyphoniae – a close cooperation that has been maintained to this day and intensified in recent years.

Start of the large-scale research and publication project on Jean de Castro: a complete edition of his works (four printed volumes published by Leuven University Press between 1993 and 1997). Later, another nine volumes with three-part compositions by Jean de Castro were brought together on one CD, spanning thirty years of polyphonic craftsmanship.

The exhibition Het muziekleven in onze gewesten (Musical Life in Our Regions) took place in the State Archives in Brussels from 21 April to 19 June.

Start of the prestigious and long-term project (1992-2001) on music and musical life in collegiate churches in Flanders and neighbouring regions (circa 1350-1797).

The Alamire Foundation, the International Centre for the Study of Music in the Low Countries, was founded as a co-operative association between KU Leuven (Musicology Research Unit) and the non-profit organization Musica Impulse Centre.

The founding members were:

1. geneticist and hunting-horn player Baron Herman Vanden Berghe, who was chair of the board from its inception until his death in 2017
2. lutenist, musicologist and cultural entrepreneur Herman Baeten, who continues to sit on the board as treasurer and representative of Musica
3. viola da gamba player, teacher and researcher Eugeen Schreurs
4. musicology professor Ignace Bossuyt

The organization takes its name from the music-copyist and entrepreneur Petrus Alamire (c. 1470-1536), under whose direction prestigious music manuscripts were produced in the first decades of the sixteenth century.