ROYAL VISIT TO ALAMIRE INTERACTIVE SOUND LAB

RESEARCH IN FOCUS

On 4 February 2020, H.M. Queen Mathilde was a guest at the Alamire Foundation, the interdisciplinary study centre of music in the Low Countries, located on the site of Park Abbey in Leuven. The programme featured a performance of Prof. Toon van Waterschoot’s Alamire Interactive Sound Lab (Group T Leuven Campus).

The Alamire Foundation was founded in 1991 and set up as a joint venture between KU Leuven (Research Group Musicology) and the Musica impulse centre. Purpose of the foundation is to coordinate and stimulate the research of early music, more in particular the rich Flemish polyphony. Special attention is paid to identifying and conserving this valuable heritage and making it accessible to performers and the public. The recently restored Norbert Gate of Park Abbey in Leuven houses the Library of Voices, where precious musical manuscripts are unlocked, digitised and prepared for performance by professional ensembles. The latter happens in two sound labs. In the Alamire Analytical Sound Lab by Prof. Bart De Moor, the complex stratification of polyphonic music is unravelled. The Alamire Interactive Sound Lab of Prof van Waterschoot concentrates on interpreting the polyphony in acoustic reconstructed historical spaces. Research is done in the Library of Voices in collaboration with the research department ESAT-STADIUS. In the House of Polyphony, the public gets to hear the results of the exploration. It houses its own concert hall and owns a collection of historical musical instruments.

Prof. Toon van Waterschoot

Acoustics

Prof. van Waterschoot and his team investigate sound, not only as a physical phenomenon, but also as a carrier of information in communication, between people and between man and machine and environment. This resulted in a multidisciplinary research methodology in which engineers, mathematicians, musicologists and implementers work together. A subdomain of this research is the so-called “archaea acoustics”, more specifically, the reconstruction of church acoustics in the late Middle Ages and its impact on the implementation of the Gregorian and polyphonic music in the Low Countries.

I Fiamminghi

From the 15th century onwards, popes, princes, courtiers and noblemen greatly admired the stars of the new polyphonic music, also kown as the ‘Flemish polyphony’. The ‘Fiamminghi’ were the idols of their time, with true cult figures like Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin Des Prez, Jacob Olbrecht, Pierre De la Rue... Peter Alamire (Nuremberg 1470 - Mechelen 1536) -after whom the Leuven Foundation is named- made them ‘world-famous’ with exquisitely illuminated copies of their work; the European dynasties’ most important business gift for a long time. Petrus Alamire was actually named Imhoff. His stage name refers to the pitch A and the notes lami-re. Since 2018, H.M. Queen Mathilde is the Patroness of the Alamire Foundation in Leuven.

Yves Persoons