Capella Alamire was founded in 1984 by Peter Urquhart while he was at Harvard University. The group's original purpose was to explore some of the repertoire of his dissertation study, and the performance practice ideas stemming from this repertoire. The music was that of Franco-Flemish composers around the time of Josquin DesPrez, and the ideas were centered on issues of pitch and structure in the music. These two concepts have remained central to the group's purpose since that time.
A name was chosen during the first year: "Alamire" was not only the term used to solmize (to sing on sol-fa syllables) the pitch A, but was also the pseudonym of a Flemish music scribe employed by the Habsburg court, c.1500. Petrus Alamire and his workshop produced some 50 presentation manuscripts that remain central sources for the transmission of the music of Josquin and his contemporaries. Capella Alamire occasionally sings directly from Alamire manuscripts, and illuminations, capitals and musical excerpts from the manuscripts are regularly used in programs and posters.
The first concert presented an overview of the Franco-Flemish tradition in the form of a composite L'homme arme mass, with individual sections by Busnoys, Pierre de La Rue, Josquin, Morales and Palestrina, and with motets by Ockeghem and Gombert. Rehearsals took place in Holmes Hall of North House at Radcliffe College, with members drawn from the Harvard-Radcliffe choirs as well as the larger community. In 1988-89, the director spent the year in Italy, and the group performed a program under Charles Turner following an edition prepared by Urquhart. Rehearsals continued in the fall of 1989 in Lowell, MA, with some new members drawn from the Portsmouth, NH area because of the director's teaching position at UNH. Commuting to rehearsals became the new pattern, not only from Cambridge, Boston and Portsmouth, but also Worcester, Providence, Amherst, and even New York City. In 1997, the ensemble experimented with a bifurcated membership, composed of a core group from Portsmouth who rehearsed extensively, and a small group from Cambridge/Boston who filled out the ensemble on fewer rehearsals.
Concerts have numbered between 8 and 12 per year, with two or three different programs each season. Each program was essentially unique; only a few pieces have received two or three performances, although titles of programs began to repeat! Almost every program contained a work or two receiving their first performances in modern times, and new works by local composers were sometimes included: Charles Turner, Rodney Lister, and Ivan Tcherepnin are among the Boston area composers whose works have been performed by the Capella.
The following is a list of Capella Alamire's concerts since its inception:
#1 12/84 Missa
L'homme armé: Busnoys, La Rue, Josquin, Morales, Palestrina
#2 4/85 16th-century English Sacred Music: Fayrfax, Taverner, Whyte
#3 12/85 Songs of the Virgin Mary: Josquin, Gombert, Monteverdi
#4 4/86 De Beata Virgine: Sacred & secular music by Josquin DesPrez
#5 12/86 Stile
Antico: Perotin, Ciconia, Ockeghem, Monteverdi, J.S. Bach
#6 4/87 Malheur me bat: the mass by Josquin, works by Cornysh &
Fayrfax
#7 11/87 In praise of Joh. Ockeghem: L'homme armé mass, &
Busnoys's In hydraulis
#8 5/88 Back to the Future: Distler, Clemens, Weinberg, Tcherepnin,
Weelkes, Britten
#9 8/88 The French Connection: Fayrfax, Josquin, Taverner, Tallis,
Gombert, Byrd
#10 4/89 Missa L'ami baudechon: Josquin, Dufay, Busnoys
#11 11/89 Sacred music by Johannes Ockeghem & Antoine Busnoys
#12 3/90 Music of Nicolas Gombert & contemporaries (Jachet da Mantua,
Verdelot)
#13 5/90 New England composers, past & present: Billings, Read,
Turner, Carter, Lister
#14 11/90 Music of Josquin DesPrez (with the Hampshire Consort)
#15 3/91 The
Art of the Canon: Ockeghem, La Rue, Mouton, Byrd, Purcell, Brahms
#16 5/91 Missa Cuiusvis Toni by Ockeghem & motets by Busnoys &
Josquin
#17 11/91 Early Tudor Church Music: Taverner, Fayrfax & Whyte
#18 2/92 Salve Regina: Josquin, LaRue, Gombert, & Chas. Turner
#19 4/92 Under
the Laurel: Heinrich Isaac in Italy
#20 11/92 Fragmenta Missarum: Ockeghem, Josquin & Brumel, with
chansons by Busnoys
#20a 4/1/93 Fragmenta
Missarum for the Library of Congress
#21 4/93 Minimalisms: music from Perotin to Part (Senfl, Tcherepnin,
Penderecki)
#22 11/93 Songs of the Virgin Mary: La Rue, Ockeghem, Josquin, Gombert
#23 4/94 The French Connection: Fayrfax, Josquin, Taverner, van Wilder,
Byrd
#24 11/94 Palestrina, Lassus, and the Franco-Flemish Tradition
#25 5/95 Low Music from the Low Countries: Ockeghem and Gombert
#26 11/95 Katholikon: Music of the Modes by Johannes Ockeghem and others
#27 4/96 Music by New England Composers, Old and New
#28 4/97 Music
by Nicolas Gombert: Magnificat, motets, chansons
#29 6/01 Music by Josquin, Mouton, and their followers (at BEMF with
the Woodman Consort)
#30 10/02 Missa Faysant regretz by Josquin
DesPrez, and instrumental works by Agricola
#31 3/03 Missa Coment peult
avoir joye by Pierrequin de Therache, with Isaac, Josquin, and Lupus
#32 6/04 & 9/04 French Chansons from the
15th-16th centuries: Busnoys, Martini, Josquin, Mouton, Bauldeweyn, Vinders
#33 11/05 & 2/06 Alexander Agricola and the Beginnings of Instrumental Music
#34 10/06 Magnificat: Church Music and Instrumental Music by Alexander Agricola and Pierrequin de Therache