Brighton Early Music Festival: Women ¬- Creators, Enchanters, Muses, Enchanters

Various venues, Friday, October 23, to Sunday, November 8

THE 2015 theme of women in early music is something Brighton Early Music Festival founders and co-artistic directors Clare Norburn and Deborah Roberts have been building to for the last 13 years.

“We met through a mutual interest in women composers in early music,” says Norburn. “It’s quite a niche interest – although it’s becoming less and less so by the year. Hopefully it will become much less so as a result of this festival.”

Norburn and Roberts first met in 1999 at a festival putting on six concerts all featuring women composers in early music.

Three years later they launched the first Brighton Early Music Festival – which has been building its audience ever since. It’s only now, Norburn says, that they felt Brighton was ready to focus on a female programme.

“We have got a core following who will come to shows even if they don’t know the music very well,” she says. “For the first few years we couldn’t take that risk – but we have got our audience to trust our programming.”

And it has clearly worked – Norburn says ticket sales are the best the festival has seen so far.

She believes it is a combination of luck and fashion which causes music to be feted or forgotten over the years.

This festival features music which dates back to ninth century Greek nun Kassia in the opening concert Daughters Of Abraham tonight at St George’s Church.

“People have said to us that this music by women had fallen into obscurity because it wasn’t very good,” says Norburn. “There’s evidence which shows that can’t be the case. The composer and singer Francesca Caccini was the best paid musician in the Medici court in 1625 – if her music wasn’t very good why would they pay her more than a man?

“Perhaps through history there was a sexist desire to write women out of history. There are fantastic pieces by male composers which have fallen into obscurity too. The further back you look in history it is the luck of the draw in terms of posterity.”

Caccini is one of the nine female composers highlighted – alongside Kassia, Lucretia Borgia’s daughter Leonora, 11th century Arab Andulusian Wallada, 12th century slave poet Safiyya al-Baghadiyya, nuns Hildegard of Bingen and Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, salon composer Barbara Strozzi, and French harpsichordist and composer Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre in a concert celebrating her 350th anniversary.

But the programme also explores the women who inspired music – including Elizabeth I and her mother Anne Boleyn, festival regular Emma Kirkby singing songs about female mythological figures and a closing performance of Handel’s Acis and Galatea which features an early strong heroine.

There are a series of first this year. The Orlando Consort performs a live soundtrack of early music contemporaneous to the heroine of Carl Dreyer’s silent film La Passione de Jeanne d’Arc at St George’s Church on Friday, October 30.

And the festival stages the earliest surving opera by a woman, Caccini’s La Liberazione Di Ruggiero Dall’Isola Di Alcina, at The Old Market, in Upper Market Street, Hove for three performances from Thursday, November 5, in a production directed by Susannah Waters.

“It’s the first major production of the opera in the UK,” says Norburn. “It was known as a balleto, and it would have included dancers, but it is certainly an early opera. Everything is sung, and it has very strong female characters. There are lots of feminist resonances in the piece.”

On Friday, November 6, The Carnival Band is performing a night of 17th century songs exploring the way women were viewed by balladeers entitled Lewd Strumpets And Constant Wives, as well as hosting a day of music aimed at young newcomers to early music, from three to 11 years old the following day.

And the early music festival is also bringing young and upcoming musicians through its Early Music Live! scheme to The Marlborough Theatre, in Princes Street, on Saturday, October 31, for the appropriately named Night Of The Witches.

As with last year anyone wanting to take a chance can buy one of hundreds of Prom tickets costing £5 on the door. These offer standing or restricted view seating for 14 events from the programme.

Various times and prices. Visit www.bremf.org.uk or call 01273 709709.