On 1 January 2024, Belgium will take over from Spain as President of the Council of the European Union. To officially kick off the Belgian presidency in Flanders, there will be a large public event in Mechelen on 6 January 2024. During these festivities the Mechelen Choirbook, one of the best-preserved manuscripts from the workshop of Petrus Alamire, will take the central place it deserves. The Alamire Foundation has produced a highly detailed facsimile of the choirbook, along with a study for the Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile series.

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 media installation is an audio-visual presentation of several seven-voice compositions found in the manuscripts of Alamire. In the adjacent exhibition, you can discover the world of five hundred years ago through the sounding polyphony and its carrier, the music manuscript. Thanks to the images created by the Alamire Digital Lab over many years, these manuscripts can be admired in great detail. After Mechelen, Speculum Musurgica will continue its international journey, moving on to the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen in Spring 2024.

Free admission, during the cathedral's opening hours.