The Early Music Show

Lucie Skeaping looks at Vivaldi's groundbreaking Op.3 set of concertos for one, two or four violins entitled "L'Estro Armonico", which were published 300 years ago. Vivaldi had them published in Amsterdam, which meant they were readily available throughout northern Europe. The 8 partbooks even landed on the desk of JS Bach, who found them so inspirational he set about making transcriptions of some...

Giulio Caccini was one of the most successful composers and highly renowned singers of his age. But lesser known are his two daughters, Francesca and Settimia Caccini. Both women were highly accomplished singers in their own right, and composers as well, and they both rose to become the highest paid members of their respective courts. Francesca also holds another claim to fame, as the first ever f...

Lucie Skeaping looks back on the life and music of the Jacobean prodigy, Orlando Gibbons. Should we be surprised that he was one of Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould's favourite composers? - the range and variety of Gibbons' remarkably accomplished output continues to inspire musicians from many different musical disciplines. Lucie Skeaping presents a cross-section of his works, not least his most fam...

On 14 May 1610, France fell into a month and a half of mourning. Le bon roi Henri, King Henri IV of France was dead. Catherine Bott explores the life of the King they called the Green Gallant and the music which accompanied both his life and his death.

Catherine Bott presents a profile of the great Spanish composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria, who died in 1611. He dedicated his musical life to the Church, working both in his native Spain and in Italy; all his compositions are vocal, sacred and in Latin. Although he was not as prolific a composer as some of his contemporaries, Victoria is now generally regarded as one of the greatest of Renaissance c...

Lucie Skeaping examines the background and music to Handel's moving 'Easter Oratorio' - La Resurrezione - which he wrote in his early twenties during his formative years in Rome. Composed for Easter Day 1708, for a gala performance at the opulent Ruspoli Palace, featuring the finest musicians to hand, including an orchestra led by Archangelo Corelli, La Resurrezione (The Resurrection) is a dramati...

Catherine Bott talks to Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet about the extraordinary travels of Thomas Coryate. Coryate was an English eccentric who as well as being credited with introducing the table fork and the umbrella to England, journeyed to Venice and back mainly on foot, and whose travel writings provide music historians with invaluable details of the activities of the Venetian schoo...

Lucie Skeaping plays a selection of music by Niccolo Jommelli. Considered a pathfinder, steering music from the traditions of Baroque opera to the immediacy of Mozart's stage works, Jommelli's operatic reforms in the mid-eighteenth century made him a widely regarded figure in his day - ground-breaking and influential. His true significance is only now starting to be valued.

Lucie Skeaping presents a programme exploring Purcell's semi-opera, The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Purcell did not set any of Shakespeare's original text, and instead added self-contained masques in each of the acts, which include some of Purcell's finest music. Lucie plays musical extracts from each of the masques from various recordings, directed by Ton Koopma...

Music at the Russian Imperial Court in the mid 18th century was largely provided by itinerant Italian masters like Paisiello, Galuppi & Manfredini, but by the end of the century a group of three talented Ukrainians began to take St Petersburg by storm. Maxim Berezovsky, Artemy Vedel and Dimitri Bortniansky became known as The Golden Three, and provided four successive monarchs with chamber mus...

Henry Desmarest was obviously a talented musican and composer, first boy page and then musician in Louis XIV's court, he began ghost-writing Grands Motets for one of the chapel directors Nicholas Goupillet when he was in his early twenties. After a decade, this scandal was uncovered, but it was not the last of Desmarest's woes! A few years later, he fell in love with one of his pupils, who also ha...

Lucie Skeaping explores the music of the 16th century Flemish composer Jacobus Clemens non Papa. In the hierarchy of the Flemish school, you could say that Clemens was of the fourth generation - if Dufay is taken as the first, Ockeghem as the second, Josquin the third, with Orlando di Lassus still to come. He was one of the few successful Flemish musicians not to travel to Italy, he spent his enti...

Lucie Skeaping explores the extraordinary story behind the earliest known medieval composer for whom a compositional autograph survives: Adémar de Chabannes and his 11th Century Mass for St Martial.

Lucie Skeaping visits the Baroque Theatre of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic, where she is given a guided tour of the auditorium, backstage areas and museum by the theatre historian Iain Mackintosh. The theatre - part of Cesky Krumlov castle - was built in 1766 to celebrate the wedding of Prince Adam von Schwarzenburg, and is recognised as arguably the best-preserved example of baroque theatre...

Lucie Skeaping looks in detail at one of Handel's most popular and enduring works: Acis & Galatea. With extracts from recordings by Trevor Pinnock, John Eliot Gardiner and Adrian Boult, among others.