Event

Petrarch in Renaissance Music

September 27, 2024 (Friday) — 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Kislak Center Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th Floor
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
3420 Walnut St.
University of Pennsylvania

Registration is Required for all guests outside of the Penn community and encouraged for all participants: Please register here

Pre-concert talk at 6:15 pm by Mauro Calcagno (Penn), with Priscilla and Grant Herreid (Piffaro).

Concert performed by Piffaro - the Renaissance Band, with the participation of Penn's Collegium Musicum, directed by Meg Bragle and vocal artists from Tenet.  

To commemorate the 650th anniversary of Petrarch's death and on the occasion of the acquisition by the Penn Libraries of a fifteenth-century manuscript, including his Canzoniere and Trionfi, the University of Pennsylvania pays homage to the Italian poet with a concert of Renaissance vocal and instrumental music based on those two works. Music by Luca Marenzio, Cipriano de Rore, Orlando di Lasso, Bartolomeo Tromboncino, and others.

A related symposium, held in the afternoon from 2:00 to 5:00 (see more here), will offer an in-depth look at the recently-acquired manuscript of Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and Triumphi. The symposium will include, at 4pm, a presentation on the Marenzio Online Digital Edition (MODE), a critical edition of the music of Luca Marenzio (ca. 1553-1599), featuring Mauro Calcagno (Penn), Giuseppe Gerbino (Columbia University) and Lucia Marchi (University of Trento).

ABOUT PIFFARO

Widely regarded as North America’s masters of music for Renaissance wind band” (St Paul Pioneer Press), Piffaro has delighted audiences throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and South America since its founding in 1980. Under the direction of Priscilla Herreid, Piffaro recreates the rustic music of the peasantry and the elegant sounds of the official wind bands of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods. Its ever-expanding instrumentarium includes over 40 shawms, dulcians, sackbuts, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, harps, and a variety of percussion — all careful reconstructions of instruments from the period. 

ABOUT PENN COLLEGIUM MUSICUM

Penn Collegium Musicum is a select chamber choir that specializes in music from the Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque period. Open by audition to all students, the choir has a special interest in historically-informed performance practice.

ABOUT MUSIC IN THE PAVILION

Presented by the University of Pennsylvania's Music Department, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and the Otto E. Albrecht Music Library, the music series Music in the Pavilion takes place in the beautiful sixth-floor Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion in Van Pelt Library. (Link to website)