The presentation of medieval music today differs dramatically from its original context. We re-contextualize the music: none of the music was composed to be a part of a concert programme or indeed for the kind of audience that we perform for. One of the crucial matters for contemporary female singers wishing to perform medieval music is that we cannot in any way be historically authentic (however much we might wish to be), partly because of the historical marginalization of women by the church. The music presented in this particular programme would most likely have been sung by male voices in the middle ages, which means we create a sound for which there is very little historical evidence. We know however, that nuns had the same liturgical agenda as their male counterparts and that they sang monophonic pieces in their convents. We might never get to know to what extent women sang polyphonic music, or how much polyphonic music was available to women, but there are manuscripts from sixteen convents in Europe which contain two and/or three part pieces, which suggest that women probably sung polyphony if it was accessible to them. […] There is a lot of guesswork in medieval music performances. The members of Trio Mediaeval feel that performing medieval music today gives us the freedom to let our imagination and ideas flow, as though we are creating contemporary music. We have chosen to use the lack of original information to inform our performance in the present. The Trio also likes to present contemporary music alongside medieval music, and we did not despair when we found out that there was no Credo to be found in the Worcester manuscripts. Instead, we immediately saw the possibility of including a contemporary Credo, and asked Gavin Bryars, to compose the piece. The Benedicamus Domino, was also written by Bryars specifically for this programme. […] Tonight, every listener will appreciate the music and its context differently, bringing their own individual expectations to the occasion. We will all experience English medieval and contemporary music, but perhaps the most obvious thing which we all have in common is that we are alive, here and now in the present.

Anna Maria Friman-Henriksen