LuAnn Johnson

Blue false indigo's flowering period is short, but the foliage always looks cool even on the hottest day of summer.

When Christian IV of Denmark visited his brother-in-law James Stuart in England, they threw some raucous, wild parties . . . so, it’s no surprise that King Christian’s fondness for the British Isles informed his musical patronage. This week on Harmonia: renaissance music from the court at Copenhagen.

This week on Harmonia: music associated with coffee and coffeehouses. Grab a cup of your favorite brew as we travel from Constantinople to Leipzig, London, Paris, and back again, hearing sounds of different coffeehouses from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

Now is the month of Maying, and English madrigalists weren’t the only ones singing about it! This week on Harmonia, we’ve got music for that marvelous time when winter is long gone but the hottest days have yet to chase us back indoors. Join us for a wide range of May songs, tunes on spring flowers and gentle breezes, and a seasonal feature from Fretwork and The Sixteen.

With daily comic strips, it’s either a laugh with the next installment or a problem that may not be solved until tomorrow. The lesson either way is that life is short.

In February, it is appropriate to think about roses.

Lindsay was the Grande Dame of gardening in a time when ladies did not have professional careers.

Troubadours have been romanticized and reimagined in popular culture for centuries now, but rarely does that evocative re-imagination include the many women among these elite poet-musicians of medieval Southern France. This week on Harmonia, the music of the women troubadours, known as “trobairitz.”

This hour, we’re going to hear half a dozen pieces from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, each of which begins with the same two words, “Quis dabit” - Latin for “who will give.” We’ll find that for hundreds of years those two words have signaled a call to mourning and have been the inspiration for unforgettable music.

Hell, the underworld, and areas of evil are home to many of music’s darkest scenes. This week on Harmonia, baroque music featuring portrayals of evil spirits, Lucifer, and Hell. Then, darkness turns to light in our featured release, Epiphany: Biber, Buxtehude, Kapsberber, & Bach, by Three Notch’d Road.