Demestvo performs Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame during the Choral Eucharist at Trinity Church Princeton, as part of The Nicene Creed 1700th anniversary conference. Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame is historically significant and rarely performed today.  It is the earliest known polyphonic mass setting written by a single composer.  Machaut is remarkable because of the wealth of information that survives about him, a rarity for musicians from the 14th century.  He was at the center of the Ars Nova movement, and his Messe de Nostre Dame set the stage for cyclic masses of the Renaissance.  It is thought that this work was composed in the 1360’s.

Lost Polyphonies is a program of the earliest polyphonic traditions from France, Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, England and Greece, performed alongside contemporary works composed in response to these chant traditions. It showcases an array of radically divergent early polyphonic traditions, including several new transcriptions of polyphonic works which have not been performed for over 300 years.

This concert is free. No tickets or reservations are necessary.