Full Event Details
- Artist: Voice
- Tour: Oxford Festival of the Arts – Church Crawl
- Date: 15 Jun 2025
- Time: 4:00pm
- Venue: Blessed Virgin Mary
- City: Oxfordshire
- Address: Beckley
- Country: United Kingdom
- Admission: Full Price Tickets £15 / Concessions £12 / Students + Under 18s £5 Package price for all 3 Voices Trio concerts £39
- Age restrictions: All Ages
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- Notes: Medieval Women in Song: celebrates women in medieval music as composers, icons, and narrators. With sacred and secular songs from across Europe, Voice Trio’s programme features the beautiful chant of St Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179), medieval songs about the ever-popular holy maiden St Mary, ‘laude’ (praise songs), and songs exploring secular subjects of desire, sisterhood, and unattainable love. This music continues to inspire today, and the trio will perform new works by contemporary female composers whose compositions are influenced by these medieval women. Pre-concert talk: Professor Elizabeth Gemmill will give a short talk about Medieval women inspired by the divine. Inspired by the divine We are used to thinking that women in the Middle Ages were subjugated to the will of men. After all, the laws of inheritance disfavoured them; it was rare for women to hold public office; they did not fight in battles; they could not be ordained as priests. And yet, there was an avenue, through the religious life, for women to wield authority, to influence others, and, inspired by the divine, to create. Hildegard, twelfth-century abbess of the German monastery of Bingen, whose music we are to hear this evening was truly exceptional – scholar, musician, poetess, visionary. But there were other, albeit less known, medieval women for whom the Church gave opportunities to teach, to lead, to nurture, and to inspire. In this brief talk we shall meet some of them.