2007 / Memorabilia

various locations at home and abroad

A mobile concert wherein the audience can observe the manuscripts from which the music is performed over the shoulders of the singers.

Memorabilia is a production in which the most ‘memorable’ fragments (as far as the researcher/performer is concerned) from the Ghent repertoire are used as the point of departure for a production in which the purity and clarity of Gregorian chant is fully expressed. The artistic research has tracked down some remarkable local chant and has drawn attention to noteable versions of the more universal feasts. It has also occasioned experimentation with how the memory of the chant performer functions. The singers have trained themselves to improvise polyphony (‘super librum’ singing, and simple forms such as fauxbourdon), using the original manuscript as the source. Memorabilia uses as few props as possible and employs as far as it can the inner strength and ‘beauty’ of Gregorian chant.