Galway Early Music Festival 2010
From manic dances to ecstatic chants,
The Galway Early Music Festival brings music and madness to Galway in its 15th annual festival of medieval, renaissance and baroque music.
In all time and in all places shifting cultural and social models of madness have been expressed in music, dance, theatre, literature and painting. The 2010 Festival programme ranges from the dance epidemics of the Middle Ages, where entire communities of people would join hands, dance, leap, scream and shake for hours, to the madness of love, so beautifully expressed in medieval & renaissance vocal music, to the madness of the gambler who plays to his ruin, and finally to the ecstatic chant music of religious visionaries and mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen.
There is music here for everyone: well-known composers such as Handel, Purcell and Dowland, exotic anonymous dances, secular love song, beautiful sacred music from the western chant tradition and the martial & healing music of pre-historic Irish horns. Performed on instruments both familiar and strange (recorder, lute, baroque guitar, viola da gamba, and lirone, to name a few), these concerts are a very special treat.
Concerts, talks, film, workshops, and family by internationally-recognised performers using historical instruments, workshops and costumed street performance, coupled with the West of Ireland's unique welcome and warmth, make this the place to be in May for a taste of medieval, renaissance and baroque magic!
For Further Information www.galwayearlymusic.com
