Trobár Talks

In anticipation of our Oct 25-26 shows A Room of Her Own : Christine’s Defense of Women ( tickets available here ), Allison and Elena speak about our favorite groundbreaking medieval writer with scholar Charlotte Cooper-Davis. Find links to both her introductory book, Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy, and her scholarly tome, Christine de Pizan, Empowering Women in Text and Image, at her webs...

We are re-releasing our first ever podcast conversation in time for the return of one of our favorite programs, A Room of Her Own: Christine de Pizan's Defense of Women (coming to Cleveland October 25-26!). Founding members Allison Monroe, Elena Mullins, and Karin Weston discuss Pizan's bold and ambitious defense of women in her masterpiece, The Book of the City of Ladies . We also take...

In this month's episode we interview award-winning playwright and poet Robert Kehew. Kehew was gracious enough to let us use some of the translations from his book Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours, a Bilingual Edition, for our latest season program, Found in Translation 2.0. You can learn more about the book and even hear some live readings of their translations by Kehew and...

In this episode we take a tour through Conrad von Zabern's 15th c. treatise on singing chant, "De modo bene cantandi choralem cantum." Von Zabern's exhortations are entertaining and still relevant today! Support the show Follow us on Facebook , and sign up to receive not-at-all-frequent email updates!

This month we chat with our friend and colleague, David McCormick. David is the Executive Director of Early Music America, the Artistic Director of Early Music Access Project, a beautiful vielle player, and an overall delightful human being. We get to hear all about how he came to early music, and what his hopes and dreams are for the field. Support the show Follow us on Facebook , and sign up to...

In this episode we discuss the poetic pastourelle genre popular with 13th c. French trouvères, and read excerpts from Christine de Pizan's longer narrative pastourelle, the Dit de la pastoure (Tale of the Shepherdess). Medieval pastourelles all begin with the same setup: a knight encounters a shepherdess while he's out riding. The stories play out in a variety of ways, but there is a con...

In this episode the trio was fortunate enough to snag a conversation with Anne Azéma , French-born vocalist, scholar and stage director, as well as the director of The Boston Camerata since 2008 and the French ensemble Aziman, which she founded, since 2005. We got to hear about Anne's musical training, and chat about the challenges of working with and presenting medieval music to modern audie...

Warning: This month’s episode of Trobár Talks is so bad that we can only imagine you all using it as blackmail material years from now. Regardless, we wish everyone a happy holiday season and promise to do better in 2022!! ******* In the episode we read excerpts of The Second Shepherds’ Play in a modern translation (with a few semi-appropriate musical insertions). Dover Thrift Editions - https://w...

In this episode the trio reads aloud an English translation of "Guigemar," an engaging and somewhat strange lai (or tale) by Marie de France, preserved in a manuscript from the 13th c.  And of course we provide context and color commentary along the way! Support the show Follow us on Facebook , and sign up to receive not-at-all-frequent email updates!

In this episode the trio discusses the influence that Middle Eastern traditions may or may not have had on the development of European medieval music, and what modern re-creators of the music (like Thomas Binkley) have learned from studying those traditions. In particular we discuss Binkley's "On the Modern Performance of Medieval Monophonic Repertory," Jonathan Shull's "L...

Join the trio for a romp through The Story of an Early Music Quartet , Sterling Jones's first-hand account of the rise and fall of the Studio der frühen Musik. The Studio helped set the standard for medieval music performance in the 1960s and influenced future generations of performers as founding members of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Historical Performance Department at Indiana...

In this episode the trio explores Christmas traditions in medieval England, including feasting, decorating, knife throwing, caroling, and extra-special holiday treats (dried fruit and nuts disguised as entrails, anyone?) ***************************** Watch this space for performances by yours truly of seasonal music, including one of the carols discussed in the episode. ***************************...

In this episode Allison and Elena are joined by guest artists Sian Ricketts and Allen Otte , providing you a behind the scenes glance at our upcoming live concerts! We even preview two of our favorite selections from the program. Learn more about the two shows here, happening this Sep. 17 & 18 in Cleveland Heights and Cleveland's Clark Fulton neighborhood. And learn more about the excelle...

A long-overdue episode detailing our 2022-23 season that started a month ago (cue rending of garments and gnashing of teeth). Check out our season details here !  Support the show Follow us on Facebook , and sign up to receive not-at-all-frequent email updates!

In this episode we read and discuss a letter that Hildegard wrote to the Prelates at Mainz, who had placed her and her nuns under interdict for failing to follow their instructions. The interdict had deprived them of the ability to sing the divine office, a punishment that Hildegard believed was not just unnecessarily harsh, but also contradictory to the will of God.  In this letter, she makes som...

In this episode, we explore the symbolically rich descriptions of the appearance and dress of the virtues that Hildegard experienced in her visions, and described in her work Scivias (c. 1150). Support the show Follow us on Facebook , and sign up to receive not-at-all-frequent email updates!

In this episode we get a bit more acquainted with one of our favorite saints, the 12th-c. abbess, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, philosopher, and botanist Hildegard von Bingen. As impressive a person as Hildegard was, she was not uncontroversial in her own day. An exchange of letters between Hildegard and a Mistress Tengswich reveal aspects of her world view and ways of operating that may tr...