Sequentia celebrates its 48th season with this addition to "The Lost Songs Project" combining the talents of three extraordinary storytellers/singers, with the accompaniment of two matched Romanesque harps, for this surprisingly modern medieval tale. Sung and spoken in the original medieval German verse, with video titles in English, the artists will assume the roles of various characters, but also function as narrators, in direct communication with their courtly audience.

Although the medieval version by Hartmann von Aue survives in multiple text manuscripts, his tale was probably told orally: sung, spoken and accompanied, for courtly gatherings of sophisticated listeners who could never get enough. Sequentia's reconstruction of Hartmann's masterpiece retells this story in the same style that captivated binge-listening courtly audiences in the years around 1200.

As late as the mid-20th century, Hartmann's "Gregorius" inspired the Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann to re-tell the story in modern prose, published under the title of "Der Erwählte" ("The Chosen One") in 1952.

—Benjamin Bagby
 

Sequentia is one of the world’s most respected and innovative ensembles for medieval music. It is an international group of singers and instrumentalists – united in Paris under the direction of the legendary performer and teacher Benjamin Bagby – dedicated to the performance and recording of Western European music from the period before 1300. The size and disposition of the ensemble is determined by the repertoire being performed, and ranges between an instrumental/vocal duo to a large vocal ensemble. Based on meticulous and original research, intensive rehearsal and long gestation, Sequentia’s virtuosic performances are compelling, surprising in their immediacy, and strike the listener with a timeless emotional connection to our own past musical cultures.

Founded by Benjamin Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton, Sequentia can look back on nearly 50 years of international concert tours, performing throughout Europe, North and South America, India, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia. Sequentia has brought to life over seventy innovative concert programmes that encompass the entire spectrum of medieval music, in addition to the creation of music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, the Cividale Planctus Marie, the Bordesholmer Marienklage, and Heinrich von Meissen’s Frauenleich (several of which were filmed for television). The work of the ensemble is divided between a small touring ensemble of vocal and instrumental soloists, and a larger ensemble of voices for the performance of Latin liturgical chant and polyphony. After 25 years based in Cologne, Germany, Sequentia’s home has been in Paris since 2002.

Sequentia has inspired new generations of young performers, trained in professional courses given by Benjamin Bagby and other members of the ensemble. As an extension of this work, Bagby teaches in the masters degree program for medieval music performance practice, which he helped create in 2005 at the Université de Paris – Sorbonne.