Festival Concert Finale: Wayfaring Pipers
Presented by Limerick Early Music Festival
Considering the many natural and human disasters that have struck Europe, it is remarkable how much medieval music has survived. Numerous liturgical manuscripts preserve Gregorian chant, hymns, sequences, and complex polyphonic masses, alongside sacred and secular songs sung by both nobles and commoners.
Festival Concert Finale: Wayfaring Pipers
Yet this material cannot provide a complete picture of medieval musical life. Most surviving notation records vocal music, and only the social elite—religious and worldly—documented what they performed. What remains is only the visible tip of a vast musical iceberg. Still, medieval images of active musicians show a vibrant everyday musical culture now largely lost. This living sound world is what the Wayfaring Pipers programme explores.
Drawing on surviving sources and folk traditions that have continued unbroken since medieval times, Ian Harrison and Poul Høxbro reveal a rich exchange between popular melody and liturgical music, blending classical medieval sounds with inherited folk traditions.
Wayfaring Pipers
T&Cs
- Please note all ticket prices include a booking charge.
- No exchanges or refunds.
- Wheelchair spaces can only be booked over the phone. Please call box office on (061) 953400 if you wish to book a wheelchair space.
- No late comers admitted to the theatre once show commences.
- On street parking.
