The Early Music Show

German-born Johann Christoph Pepusch spent much of his career working in London, where he founded the Academy of Ancient Music and found fame with his music for John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera”. Lucie Skeaping talks to Robert Rawson of Canterbury Christ Church University about the extraordinary life and music of this now-neglected 18th-century composer.

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is home to a priceless collection of manuscripts bequeathed to the university by the extraordinary 18th-century polymath, the 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam. Harpsichordist Sophie Yates visits the museum to explore the life and legacy of Fitzwilliam, whose now-famous Virginal Book is considered to be the primary source for late Elizabethan and early Jacobean keyboard...

Sicilian-born composer Alessandro Scarlatti had a love/hate relationship with the city of Rome. In the early part of his career, he was employed there by the self-exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, and he returned to the city for the last six years of his life, composing some of his finest work there. Lucie Skeaping explores Scarlatti's Roman years and some of the music he produced during his time...

Harry Christophers, Founder & Conductor of the Sixteen, celebrates 40 years of the ensemble in conversation with Lucie Skeaping, and chooses some of his favourite recordings from the choir's extensive discography. With music by Mundy, Victoria, Monteverdi, Purcell and Handel.

A fascinating exploration of three extraordinary Catalonian brothers: Joan, Manuel and Josep Pla, who performed and composed in Barcelona, Lisbon and Madrid during the mid-18th century, including at the Spanish and Portuguese Royal courts. Presented by Hannah French.

The Elizabethan Dance Band: Lucie Skeaping is joined by William Lyons to explore music for the Broken Consort, an ensemble heard at dances and theatre productions, and for which Thomas Morley compiled a rarely-heard repertory.

Lucie Skeaping talks to Dr Sam Barrett and Benjamin Bagby about Sequentia’s project to reconstruct songs from Boethius’ seminal work, “The Consolation of Philosophy” - one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. It’s a fascinating piece of research, musical detective work, detailed reconstruction... and some imagination too!

On the day before Bonfire Night, Hannah French explores music for fireworks, with music by Corelli, Bach, Rameau and Gluck, and Handel's celebrated Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Hannah French explores Francois Couperin's extraordinarily dark and powerful vocal music for Holy Week - his settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah - the Lecons de Tenebres.

Countertenor Iestyn Davies marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of composer Philip Rosseter, and his role in a thriving scene that included Thomas Campion, John Dowland and Robert Johnson.

Lucie Skeaping takes her second musical journey through the mysterious world of possession, featuring witchcraft, demons, sorcery and madness, and including pieces by Handel, Tartini, Purcell and Charpentier.

Lucie Skeaping takes the first of two musical journeys through the mysterious world of possession, featuring music associated with the ecstatic trances of Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila and Joan of Arc, Sufi dervishes, musical exorcisms performed to the wild rhythms of the tarantella and initiation rites of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé.

Hannah French explores the simple melody "The Western Wind" that inspired the early 16th Century masses by John Taverner, John Sheppard and Christopher Tye.

Hannah French marks the 300th anniversary of the premiere of Handel's Acis & Galatea on the terraces overlooking the gardens at Cannons - the seat of the Duke of Chandos.

A tale of two printers: Estienne Roger in Amsterdam and John Walsh in London. Hannah French discovers how and why they changed the publishing scene and how musical taste spread across Europe as a result.

Robert Hollingworth looks at Orazio Vecchi's madrigal comedy L'Amfiparnaso, which was premiered in Modena in in 1594. It's a particular form of musical theatre that flourished briefly in Italy, just before the dawn of opera, combining music and commedia dell'arte, the down-to-earth improvised street comedy of the time.

Lucie Skeaping talks to cornett player Gawain Glenton about the history of the Hanseatic League - a trade route that developed across the Baltic Sea and beyond from our own shores right up to Estonia - which engendered its own musical tradition too. They are joined in the studio by Dr Bettina Varwig, lecturer in early modern music at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. Gawain has just relea...

Hannah French looks at music celebrating the Feast of the Ascension through the eyes of father and son JS and CPE Bach.

Lucie Skeaping presents a musical exploration of the Greek myth of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and granddaughter of Zeus, as told in works by Handel, Porpora, Monteverdi, Benda and Marcello.

Lucie Skeaping talks to harpsichordist Carole Cerasi about the keyboard music of Francois Couperin, in the light of her recent release of the complete works for harpsichord.

Lucie Skeaping profiles the life, times and music of the 18th-century Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, who won the admiration of many distinguished contemporaries, among them Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the most neglected figures of the late baroque, Zelenka composed some of the most sumptuous and glorious church music ever written.

As part of the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Debussy's death, Hannah French asks what it was about Rameau that inspired the composer's "Hommage a Rameau".

Looking ahead to International Women's Day, Lucie Skeaping talks to Rebecca Cypess of Rutgers University in New Jersey about music played, collected and commissioned by the Jewish salon hostess Sara Levy (1761-1854), student of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn. Levy was a remarkable woman and was hugely important in the preservation and perpetuation of the Bach family tr...

Lucie Skeaping looks at the life and music of John Wilbye, who spent the majority of his career in the service of the Cornwallis family of Hengrave Hall in his home county of Suffolk.

Hannah French delves into the battle between the two opera companies in London in the 1730s - King George II's Royal Academy of Music with its musical director Handel - and the Prince of Wales' Opera of the Nobility under the guidance of Nicola Porpora. After four seasons of in-fighting and warring between the two factions, expensive set and costume designs and overpaid starry performers, both com...