ENSEMBLE SEQUENTIA, Benjamin Bagby director

“...performs with both scholarly insight and dramatic verve."


The New Yorker

For over 30 years, the Ensemble Sequentia has set the standard for the performance of Medieval music. Founded in 1977 by Benjamin Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton, Sequentia can look back on more than three decades of international concert tours, a comprehensive discography spanning the entire Middle Ages (including the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen), film and television productions of medieval music drama, and new generations of young performers trained in professional courses given by the ensemble

Sequentia has researched and brought to the public over sixty-five innovative concert programs that encompass the entire spectrum of medieval music, in addition to the creation of unique music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, the Cividale Planctus Marie, the Bordesholmer Marienklage, Heinrich von Meissen’s Frauenleich, and the medieval Icelandic Edda. The work of the ensemble is divided between a small touring ensemble of vocal and instrumental soloists, and an ensemble of voices for the performance of chant and polyphony. After 25 years based in Cologne, Germany, Sequentia’s home has been re-established in Paris. In the 2008-2009 season, Sequentia’s newly-formed ensemble of men’s voices, based in Paris, will premiere three innovative new programs this year:

works from the Carmina Burana Manuscript—as part of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s subscription season at Symphony Hall on a concert with the Carl Orff version drawn from the same texts.

The Grail, the Knight and the Poet: the Medieval ‘Perceval’ Legend'
A new program of song, story and instrumental music from 13th century Germany and France, commissioned by the Cité de la Musique in Paris

'Voices from the Island Sanctuary' A new program of vocal music from Notre Dame de Paris (12-13c)