The Alamire Foundation has created an innovative sound installation in cooperation with KU[N]ST Leuven and 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. Through the GAUDE installation, the Alamire Foundation is bringing late-medieval musical rituals to life in a virtual world.

“Gaude redempta plebsque caelicola festa Mariae
iubila voce mente tripudia cantica psalle”

The sound installation makes it possible to hear how the echoing sounds of the monophonic plainchant gradually move through the space of the abbey’s corridor as if sung in a passing procession. This immersive sound experience then goes further, revealing the complex texture and layering of polyphony through a virtual performance of the polyphonic Agnus Dei from Du Fay's Missa Ecce ancilla Domini that was sung during liturgy in church.

The hymn Gaude redempta is part of the first Vespers of the Recollectio Festorum Beata Marie Virginis, an office memoralizing six Marian feasts (her Conception, Purification, Annunciation, Visitation, Assumption, and Nativity) that originated in fifteenth-century Cambrai. The Recollectio office also reached churches and monasteries in the Low Countries, including the city of Leuven, as evidenced by two seventeenth-century manuscript from the Pauscollege that contain the office.

In order to create this innovative sound-artwork, we have drawn on research into Du Fay's office and chants, carried out by musicologist and Senior Fellow at the Alamire Foundation, Barbara Haggh-Huglo. In this way, we are breathing new life into the musical heritage of the Low Countries, which also resounded here in Leuven.

From 7 December to 4 February 2024.
More info and tickets via the Park Abbey website.

Concept:

Alamire Foundation
Bart Demuyt
Rudi Knoops

Musicological research:

Barbara Haggh-Huglo

Technical realization:

CONCEPT10
Steven Kemland
Stijn Vermeiren

Production:

Alamire Foundation
Peter Van den Borre
Aletheia Vanackere
Barbara Van den Abeele

Performers:

Cappella Pratensis
Stratton Bull (artistic direction)
Tim Braithwaite
Paul Kolb
Lior Leibovici
Grantley McDonald
Korneel Van Neste

Recording:

LUCA – Campus Lemmensinstituut
17 September 2023

Sound:

Manuel Mohino
Flavio Lanotti

Thanks to:

Johan Abts
Koen Adams
Katrien Deckers
Maarten Jacobs
Lien De Keukelaere
Gilbert Huybens
KU[N]ST Leuven

Part of the FWO – SBO project The Sound of Music and the city festival New Horizons / Dieric Bouts.