Discover the Leuven Chansonnier
We invite you to a lecture by musicologist Stef Coninx from the Alamire Foundation.

The 2025 Days of Early Music Festival will open with an exceptional concert by the Sollazzo Ensemble on Friday, June 6 at 7:00 PM in the Klarisky Concert Hall in Bratislava. The programme will feature selections from the Leuven Chansonnier – a unique 15th-century manuscript and one of the most important musicological discoveries of the past decade. The twelve pieces it contains have not survived in any other source, and the ensemble will bring them to life in a captivating performance.

On this occasion, we also warmly invite you to a special accompanying lecture taking place on the same day, Friday, June 6 at 2:00 PM, at the Music Centre on Michalská Street in Bratislava. We will welcome musicologist Stef Coninx from the Alamire Foundation (KU Leuven), who will present the Leuven Chansonnier, its significance, and its place within the Integrated Database for Early Music (IDEM) project. The lecture will also address challenges related to the translation and interpretation of historical texts as part of the Lost in Translation initiative. The event will include the screening of a documentary film.
Admission is free until full capacity is reached.

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Stef Coninx (KU Leuven) is a renowned Belgian musicologist who began his academic career by continuing the work of Herman Baeten at academies and music schools in northern Limburg. He worked for several years in the cultural department of the city of Hasselt, later as a part-time music dramaturg at CC Strombeek-Bever and in the audio library of VRT. Since the 1990s, he has held various roles in the music sector, including product and marketing manager for classical music at PolyGram/Universal Music, director of Muziekcentrum Vlaanderen, and employee at the department for international relations and classical music at Kunstenpunt.

Today, he actively contributes to the international activities of the Alamire Foundation, where he applies his expertise to the IDEM project. The many manuscripts digitized in recent years by the Alamire Digital Lab—including chansons, madrigals, and motets—contain not only music but also multilingual textual material. These texts provide rich material for research, both in content and form. The Lost in Translation project aims to offer practical tools for navigating and translating these old texts via the IDEM database.

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The Alamire Foundation, based in Leuven, is an internationally recognized centre for research and documentation of early music. It focuses primarily on chant and Franco-Flemish polyphony. The foundation makes little-known or previously unexplored musical material accessible through digital means and live performance on world stages.

Its work combines scholarly research with cutting-edge technology and artistic realization, helping to revive early music for today's audiences. The foundation produces publications, facsimiles, and film projects presented on the digital platform alamire.tv, featuring leading ensembles and experts from the fields of musicology, codicology, history, literature, and more. Alamire Foundation also offers artistic residencies, allowing musicians to study repertoire and performance practice and to share the results through recordings and concerts.

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Alamire Foundation, Centre of Excellence for the Musical Heritage of the Low Countries
www.alamirefoundation.org | ???? alamire.tv

We believe this event will be both an inspiring and enriching experience for scholars and music lovers alike.

Updated: 02. 06. 2025