a website devoted to music of the Renaissance.
Capella Alamire was formed in 1984 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the purpose of exploring the repertoire of the Renaissance. The word Alamire is a solmization term for the pitch A, sung as la, mi, or re; it was also the pseudonym of a Flemish music scribe employed by the Habsburg court at the beginning of the 16th century in the region of present-day Belgium and northern France, an area that produced many of the greatest composers and singers of the time. In the first twelve years the ensemble performed some 28 programs in over 100 concerts. The majority of these have been centered on repertoire by Franco-Flemish composers: Josquin DesPrez (Missae De beata Virgine, Malheur me bat, L'ami baudechon), Johannes Ockeghem (Missae L'homme armé, Fors seulement, Cuiusvis toni), Antoine Busnoys, Pierre de la Rue, Heinrich Isaac, and Nicholas Gombert. Capella Alamire has released six CD recordings to date, including one through Titanic Records (Motets, 1992), and two through Dorian Discovery (The Early Josquin, 1995, and Three Masses by Ockeghem, 1997), and our latest one through Naxos (Gombert, 2006).