On 18 and 19 March, a series of workshops will take place at the House of Polyphony under the theme Living Notation: Marks of Use in Early Printed Polyphony. They will be led by Louisa Hunter-Bradley (King's College London) and ensemble-in-residence Cappella Pratensis, and form part of the project Dissemination, Ownership, and Reading of Music in Early Modern Europe, in short DORMEME.

Across four practical sessions, sixteenth-century prints of polyphonic music that bear traces of use–annotations, inscriptions, notes, and more–will be explored. Such markings reveal how early readers and musicians actively engaged with the printed notation. Understanding how these historical interpretative strategies can inform today’s performance practice lies at the heart of the project. Addressing these questions calls for a multidisciplinary, practice-based methodology, bringing specialists in early-music performance into dialogue with evidence from historical sources. In doing so, the workshops offer new perspectives on the relationship between notation and performance across time.

You are welcome to attend the final session on 19 March from 14:00 to 17:00 at the House of Polyphony.