Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi is an annual music festival under the artistic direction of Philippe Herreweghe in the beautiful region of the Crete Senesi in Tuscany.
2017 promises to be a special year: the year in which artistic director Philippe Herreweghe celebrates its 70 years and in which the world is celebrating the Monteverdi-year (Claudio Monteverdi was born 450 years ago).
The Festival Accademia delle Crete Senesi, was founded by Philippe Herreweghe. [1]

06 - 11 AUG 2017

In 1970, Philippe Herreweghe founded the Ghent choir Collegium Vocale Gent. They were one of the first ensembles to use new ideas about baroque performance practice in vocal music. Authenticity is the core concept on which we measure the value of music.
About this historical execution practice, Bert Schreurs, general director of the company, writes

What we can do is to try to rid musical tradition of the ‘noise’ that inevitably arises in the transfer from one generation of musicians to the next, with utmost care and precision. This basic attitude is of essential importance and is embedded in the concept of authenticity. Accordingly, authenticity in its original sense of ‘made with one’s own hands’ (…).

Stefan Hertmans wrote very beautifully about this question for the occasion of Philippe Herreweghe’s 70th birthday in his text Omzichtige Radicaliteit (Prudent Radicalness’):

‘what is authentic is the attention to detail in the score, to understand what is on the page – not so much all the vague idealistic notions about what the intention can be, but what is concretely expected of the performer from measure to measure. Of course, this also assumes context – cultural context, historical context, an understanding of the framework in which a given musical idea developed – but its core remains an ascetic interest in the concrete, or even more so: an interest that refuses to appropriate the historicizing intentions of the music …. It assumes subservience and sovereignty in one.'

2017 marks the Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi festival with a special anniversary program.

Program

Special event will be the performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s Maria Vespers by Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe in the beautiful setting of the Sant’ Anna in Camprena monastery. Look for the beautiful frescos by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (Il Sodoma) in its Refectory.