Historical harp virtuoso Maximilian Ehrhardt, who has gained great popularity due to his unconventional concert programmes and research, will perform a programme in five parts with a prologue and epilogue during Wratislavia Cantans. The repertoire includes Renaissance and Baroque works by nine composers and several anonymous pieces. 

The first to be performed will be a work from The English Dancing Master. It was first published in 1651 by John Playford – a bookseller, publisher and composer. This collection contained melodies and instructions on how to dance English folk dances. It included over a hundred pieces and was published many times, gradually growing to three volumes.

Although Jean-Baptiste Lully spent his entire adult life as the court composer of Louis XIV, he was born in Italy, in Florence. He went down in history not only for his enormous talent, especially in the field of opera, but also for his… despotic nature. At one point, he became the absolute ruler of French musical life, enjoying extensive influence and a great fortune. The harrowing circumstances of his death are also often mentioned: while conducting his Te Deum, Lully hit his foot with a sharp-tipped stick, which he used to measure the beat. He did not agree on amputation and died of infection from the wound. 

The English composer and lute virtuoso John Dowland’s many works are dark and filled with melancholy. During the concert, Ehrhardt will perform two works by this composer – The Frog Galliard and Mrs Brigide Fleetwood’s Pavan alias Solus Sine Sola. Peter Philips, who like Dowland hailed from the British Isles, was an organ virtuoso, as well as a Catholic priest. He enjoyed a reputation as an excellent performer, often transcribing other composers’ works for organ. The Dutchman Adrianus Valerius, apart from composing, took up poetry, law and history. His magnum opus is the collection Neder-Landtsche Gedenck-Clanck, containing over seventy songs on the themes of the Hispano-Dutch War. His fellow countryman Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, an organist, teacher and composer, was sometimes referred to as the “Orpheus of Amsterdam”. He enjoyed particular acclaim as the author of works for keyboard instruments and choir. He worked as an organist at the Oude Kerk for most of his life, and one of his predecessors in this position was Cornelis Boscoop, an enigmatic figure about whom little is still known; his only surviving work is a setting of fifty psalms, published in 1562. Cornelis Thymanszoon Padbrué was a composer based in Haarlem, he came from a family of musicians and served in the municipal band, from which he was thrown out because of some conflict. All that is known about his later life is that he supported himself as a freelancer. His collection of madrigals Kusjes (Kisses) gained popularity, and in it the artist used Dutch translations of Latin erotica. Another little-known composer whose works feature in the recital programme is Jan Barent Gresse – Maximilian Ehrhardt chose his arrangements of three dances: Allemande, Courante and Sarabande.