The Programme

Arrive 3.30pm

Refreshments

On arrival guests will have the opportunity to sample:
Piment – a wine-based drink infused with a range of spices
Mead – a drink made from fermented honey and flavoured with spices
Small beer (or Table Beer) – a weak beer not containing hops

Wine, fruit juices and lemonade will also be available

The food being prepared will include:

Barley bread and Girdle Bread with a range of cheeses and mixed pickles
Rabbit terrine

Quails eggs
Pork rolls,
Lombard chicken and bacon pastries,
Meat balls with a sauce

Mushroom pasties
Golden leek and onion filled pastries

Fried fig pastries
Cream custard tart
Simnel cake
Nut candy

Music

Experienced choral scholars and lay clerks will perform a selection of a cappella medieval music.

The first half of this mini concert will be religious, in recognition that the soiree is on the eve of Easter week and that we will be standing in what was once a religious community. In the year of the 700th anniversary of Roger and Isabella returning to England the pieces have been chosen with the the thought that Roger and Isabella may well have heard them as they attended services, if not here, in France.

The earliest piece was originally composed in 600 AD. The Pange Lingua plainsong that follows is still heard in Cathedrals and Churches to this day particularly during Holy Week and would undoubtedly have been performed in the offices at Wigmore Abbey. There will then be a selection of pieces of polyphony from the School of Notre Dame composed in the 13th and early 14th centuries which Isabella may well have heard when she visited Paris.

The second half of the concert will take place whilst we eat and drink. These pieces will be lighter secular rounds and madrigals. Starting with the oldest piece ‘Summer is Icumen in” which was reputedly composed in 1226 and would have been very familiar to Roger and Isabella. It is also highly appropriate for the day the clocks go forward to herald British summertime. The other pieces will be later 14th and 15 century compositions and will probably be familiar to many.

Depart 6.00pm