WFIU

This week on Harmonia, we celebrate the life and music of William Byrd 400 years after his death. Byrd was Catholic in a time and place where it was easier to be Protestant. A favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, Byrd survived when others did not. Plus, our featured release is George Frideric Handel: Coronation Anthems.

We’re sounding the trumpet this week on Harmonia, with magnificent baroque trumpets in virtuosic solo music and majestic choral and orchestral works from Monteverdi to Telemann. Our featured release is Altissima: Works for High Baroque Trumpet with soloist Josh Cohen.

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.

This hour, we’ll meet 3 mysteriously related, musically intricate French songs, each beginning with the words “While waiting…” We’ll also meet their common musical and poetical ancestor, which does NOT begin with those words. Intrigued?

Until quite recently, the composer Loyset Compère was considered a “lesser contemporary” of Josquin des Prez. But Compere was the source of many stylistic innovations used by Josquin. Find out more this week on Harmonia.

No one has been able to discover the identity of the Susan who gave her name to this easily grown garden perennial.

One spectacular lily is Lilium superb, spelled “superbum,” but it is not pronounced as it is spelt. Its petals recurve, so a common name is Turk's cap.

The Latin name “Physostegia” refers to the calyx, which covers their seed pods. “Physa” means bladder and “stege” means a covering.

When goldenrods are in bloom, it indicates that fall is in the air...and they do NOT cause hay fever (That is ragweed!), as the pollen of goldenrod is too heavy to be dispersed by the wind.