From Manuscript to Performance

Many might wonder how musicians and scholars can take an obscure medieval manuscript and turn it into a living performance. An interview on WNYC with Benjamin Bagby, co-founder of the ensemble Sequentia , provides insight into this process. The interview also contains clips of Sequentia’s recordings, including part of Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum and a recounting of the Christian apocalypse, which Bagby says is less horrifying than its pagan counterpart. Fans of early music take note.