LA RÊVEUSE: Early Music on the Classical Cretan Lyra

For 20 consecutive years, Greek cellist, improviser, composer, and researcher Yiorgos Kaloudis has been exploring the possibilities of the Cretan lyra, one of the oldest musical instruments, in Classical music. In the program featuring masterpieces from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (research of the last 7 years), this ancient instrument, the ancestor of most European bowed string instruments, will be heard in all its timbral beauty and variety of technical capabilities.

In the program LA RÊVEUSE, the Classical Cretan Lyra appears as an ideal solo and accompanying instrument for vocals by Yiorgos Kaloudis himself, for Early Music. At the same time, due to the creator's improvements and transcriptions, the Classical Cretan Lyra brilliantly responds to the masterpieces of Early Music, most of which were written for the viola da gamba.

The program opens with a hymn dedicated to John the Baptist. The music is attributed to the founder of the entire European musical system, Guido D'Arezzo: the initial syllables of the lines of the Latin hymn Ut queant laxis – ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la – still mark the steps of the musical scale.
The English song of the 13th century about saying goodbye to summer is the oldest recorded music sheet in medieval England in the Oxford area.
Next, the central character of the recital is an extensive tribute to French Early Music, with a selection of famous compositions by the greatest poet and composer of the Middle Ages, Guillaume de Machaut, outstanding examples of French music of the 17th and 18th centuries – a one-part concerto for two violas da gamba (transcribed for one Cretan lyra) by Jean de Sainte-Colombe, as well as unique compositions for viola da gamba by his famous student Marin Marais, through which the beauty of the Classical Cretan Lyra interpretation unfolds.

In the LA RÊVEUSE program, each listener has the opportunity to enjoy the beginning and evolution of Western European Polyphonic music through the ancient sound of the Classical Cretan Lyra, exactly during the time when Vincenzo Cornaro wrote Erotokritos.

PROGRAM (Approx 70’ with no intermission)

Guido d’Arezzo (c991-1033)

  • Ut Queant Laxis

England - (Anon 1225)

  • Miri It Is While Summer Ilast

Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)

  • Le Remède de Fortune

  • Le Jugement du Roi de Navarre: Tres douce dame que j'aour

  • Je Vivroie Liement

  • Douce Dame Jolie

Sainte Colombe (1640-1700)

  • Les Pleurs

Marin Marais (1656-1728)

  • Musette

  • Le Badinage

  • L'Agréable

  • La Rêveuse

Yiorgos Kaloudis: Classical Cretan Lyra, vocals, transcriptions.