In Concert
SEVERALL FRIENDS
Mary Springfels, bowed instruments
Mark Rimple. lute and voice
Christa Patton, harp, winds and bagpipes
Sian Ricketts, recorders, doucaines and voice
A Distant Mirror: The Twilight of the
Gothic Era & Dawn of the Renaissance
Sunday, September 27, 2026 3:00 pm
Saint George’s Episcopal Church | 915 N. Oakland | Arlington, VA
Severall Friends – all experts in medieval performance – presents a concert illuminating the rich musical traditions from the end of the Gothic era and the rise of the Renaissance.
As Barbara Tuchman noted in her classic historical study, A Distant Mirror, the period from 1350 to 1400 saw cataclysmic events such as the Black Death, the Avignon Papacy and Schism, the disaster of Nicopolis, and the Hundred Years War. In the ensuing decades, the war continued between France and England; but Humanism also emerged. An era of great suffering, it also produced staggering achievements in European architecture, poetry and music. The age that gave us the poetry of Francesco Petrarch, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Christine de Pizane likewise produced, in the late fourteenth century, the beautiful and highly complex chanson that are known today as the ars subtilior and, in the early fifteenth century, the limpid French chansons that also became popular in early fifteenth century Italy.
Featuring both voice and instrumental performance on vielle, lute, gittern, harp, recorder, douçaine, and bagpipe, the program will include works by, among others, Johannes Ciconia, Trebor, Johannes Senleches, Solage, Guillaume de Machaut, Guillaume Dufay, and Gilles Binchois, rousing dance music from medieval Florence and finely wrought instrumental arrangements from the Faenza codex and the Buxheim Organ book.
General Admission: $40 | Student $15
Concert/Workshop Discount Ticket (for workshop registrants): $35
2026-2027 Season Ticket to all three Capitol Early Music concerts: $105