Our Lady of Antwerp. A Musical Path to Rubens

Our Lady of Antwerp traces the musical life of Antwerp’s great Church of Our Lady across roughly two centuries. It follows the composers who served there as singers or choirmasters, from Pullois in the 1440s to Pevernage and Pottier around 1600. Dürer visited the booming port city in 1520–21 and found exceptional singers there, and the church’s choir school and papal-bull-funded cantors made it a training ground that sent Flemish singers across Europe. The program is built around the church’s patron, the Virgin Mary, with polyphony by Pullois, Barbireau, Obrecht, Bauldeweyn, Barbé, Turnhout, Cornet, Faignient, Pevernage and Pottier, closing with Peter Philips’s Assumpta est Maria. Obrecht and Barbireau build their masses on Marian cantus firmi, and the program also includes a chanson of Turnhout, the choirmaster who replaced Lassus after a failed deal.

Between the polyphony, Gregorian chants from an Antwerp source sung by Psallentes recreate the liturgical setting, in which polyphony rose from the central lectern while the congregation heard more diffuse “angelic” sounds from on high. Eugeen Schreurs’ liner notes describe a space of light, incense and tapestries, a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk before its time. Most of the church’s organs and choirbooks were lost during the Wars of Religion, which gives this reconstruction extra weight. Recorded at AMUZ in Antwerp, it sets the music in the world Rubens knew.

Utopia Ensemble
Psallentes
Hendrik Vanden Abeele, direction