ANTWERP.- Seven fascinating music manuscripts from Petrus Alamire’s workshop, conserved in Belgium, will steep you in the culture of Flanders and Europe as they were in the year 1500. Meet the rulers, composers and musicians of the time and discover their outlook on the world and their perspectives on art. You will be able to admire the Mechelen Choirbook and the six Alamire manuscripts from the Royal Library of Belgium collection, including Margaret of Austria’s chansonnier and the Occo Codex.

These choirbooks and chansonniers, used by the singers themselves when performing, have been brought to life with sounds and images. Besides admiring the craftsmanship with which they were made, you will be able to access the entire manuscript with digital images of the most beautiful pages and most exquisite details. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp illustrate more of the story behind the manuscripts with works of art dating from that period. And of course the polyphonic music itself is part of that story: put on your headphones and step into the world of five hundred years ago.

After that you can immerse yourself completely in the sound of early 16th century polyphony. Take a walk through the installation by sound and video artist Rudi Knoops and experience the polyphonic texture of the music – as a whole or as a multiplicity of individual musical lines – and watch the musicians at work.

Who is Petrus Alamire (ca. 1470 – + 1536)?
Peter Imhoff, also known as Petrus Alamire, was born around the year 1470 into a well-known merchant family in Nuremberg, where he was presumably trained as a musician and music copyist. Following family members travelling on business, he journeyed to the Low Countries, where he was commissioned by the collegiate churches of Antwerp and ’s-Hertogenbosch to produce music manuscripts.

Shortly afterwards he entered into service at the court of Margaret of Austria and Archduke Charles (later Emperor Charles V) in Mechelen. Alamire created luxurious music manuscripts for the use of his patrons, but also as gifts for their political or business associates and other European leaders. We also have evidence that he worked as a businessman, a courier for Erasmus and other humanists, and even a spy for Henry VIII.

The project ‘Petrus Alamire – Polyphony in the Picture
The magnificently illuminated music manuscripts made 500 years ago by the calligrapher Petrus Alamire in his workshop in Mechelen has provided the starting point for a unique project. A collection of 51 manuscripts, now scattered across Europe and brought together by the Alamire Digital Lab in 15 500 images, contain a treasure trove of music dating from Alamire’s time in the style known as polyphony.

The brilliant miniatures illustrate political or religious themes or refer to the monarch, a powerful patron or the recipient of the manuscript. Many choirbooks – usually intended to be sung from in a church choir – have richly decorated frontispieces, the margins bursting with flowers and animals. Even more prevalent are the decorative calligraphic initials that indicate the beginning of a piece of music or show where a voice (soprano, alto, tenor or bass) begins.

However the manuscripts are dominated by the musical notes themselves which, when sung, open up a universe of sound that touches the hearts of many. The polyphony (music composed with several relatively independent melodic lines) composed in the Low Countries conquered the whole of Europe in its day and was held in particularly high regard.