Musica Secreta films in Florence

When Musica Secreta’s director Laurie Stras discovered several pages of intricate polyphony in a manuscript in a Florentine archive, she quickly realised that she had found the lost verses of Antoine Brumel’s Lamentations of Jeremiah ‘hiding in plain sight’.

Before the release of their recording of this beautiful music on 1st November, Laurie headed back to Florence to make a film about the discovery, having been granted exceptional permission to access two major manuscripts in the historic Italian city. Laurie says:

“When we were first thinking about how we wanted to bring Brumel’s Lamentations to audiences in performance, we knew that it would be hard to do the work justice in a stand-and-deliver concert – it feels far too contextually rich for that approach. We also wanted to express some of the wonder we feel when we see the manuscripts that communicate so much to us, without sound. Since we also are passionate about the whole process of bringing music of the past to life, from discovery to editing, to rehearsal and performance, we decided that we would introduce the concert with a short film. This, of course, meant … filming.

So, armed with a camera, a radio mic, and what turned out to be relatively inappropriate footwear, our CD producer David Lefeber and Laurie took a lightning trip to Florence, to find the places she thinks were homes for the two Antonio Moro choirbooks, and to spend a bit of time in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze with the manuscript that contains Brumel’s Lamentations.

48 hours, several pizzas, and many filmed minutes later, they returned to the UK. With luck, they will be making a similar lightning trip to Belgium in a few weeks to film with the Biffoli-Sostegni choirbook. We hope to share snippets of the film with you here before the concert…

Last, but definitely not least, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Golsoncott Foundation towards this venture. We are new to fundraising as a charity, and it was so lovely this time to ask and receive! We hope that we are up to the trust they have had in us to produce something of value.”

Watch this space for the finished film!