Stile Antico

Friday, 16 October 2026 at 7:30 pm

Polyphonic Postcards

Boston Early Music Festival

St Paul’s Church, Cambridge, MA, United States

The flourishing cities of Renaissance Europe played host to an explosion of cultural activity. Papal Rome dripped luxury, Paris was renowned as a centre of learning, and port cities such as Lisbon and Seville were deluged with treasure from newly discovered corners of the globe. These cities were fertile ground for musicians: the Sistine Chapel could afford to employ the finest composers of the day, the resources of seventeenth-century Venice spurred the groundbreaking music of Claudio Monteverdi, and the chaos of Parisian street markets provided inspiration for Jannequin’s Les cris de Paris. This programme provides a fascinating snapshot of music, politics, and culture at the apogee of the European Renaissance.