Where folk, trad and early music meet

- the common grounds

HISS 2024 Mon 19 - Fri 23 August

Booking for HISS 2024 is open

Book your place here

Some course details and other arrangements will be updated in the comng weeks, to reflect the pattern of bookings as they come in - so please help by booking early!

Can you help? We are urgently in need of an administrative assistant! Unfortunately Jenny, who agreed to take on the role, has announced that she is expecting a baby just before the course and will not be able to be present for it.

If you, or anyone you know, who can handle spreadsheets, the website, mailing lists, social media, etc, and remain calm and smiling - please get in touch. Email us at hissenquiries@gmail.com

We are delighted and privileged to announce that our Guest Tutor for HISS 2024 is

Robert Hollingworth

As founder and director of the internationally remowned vocal group I Fagiolini Robert has a long record of truly innovative projects behind him. As erudite as it is entertaining, his way of illuminating early music and bringing it to life for the 21st century is remarkable and spellbinding.

The 17th century is surely the most interesting musical period to go rooting around in. While the 16th and 18th centuries are generally more stylistically uniform, in the mid-17th century you never know what you’re going to find. Some music is better left in libraries, falling out of use with good reason; Orazio Benevoli’s Missa Tu es Petrus mass is quite spectacularly not one of those pieces.

Orazio Benevoli (1605-72) was French by birth. His father (a confectioner from Lorraine) Italianised the surname on moving to Italy, and Orazio became a chorister at San Luigi dei Francesi, the French church in Rome, famed for the sumptuous forces it assembled to perform polychoral music on major feast days. He eventually became maestro of the unrivalled Cappella Giulia, the Julian Choir at St Peter’s, Rome, and the leading composer of what is now called the Colossal Baroque school. Of all Benevoli’s multi-choir settings for Mass and Vespers, none surpasses his Missa Tu es Petrus, based on Palestrina’s famous six-voice motet. It is music designed to overwhelm the senses. We will explore this work for four choirs, with voices doubled by instruments, and all singers and players will be able to take part, under Robert’s expert tutelage. This is an opportunity not to be missed!

If you have heard the recently released CD of Benevoli’s Missa Tu Es Petrus recorded by Robert Hollingworth and I Fagiolini, which includes our regular tutors Rebecca Austen-Brown and Richard Thomas, you will know what glorious music this is! For more on this project see this page here.

Click the link below to watch a behind-the-scenes video of the performers at work:

I Fagiolini/Benevoli Missa Tu Es Petrus

“HISS successfully embraces & celebrates the links between early and folk music. A wonderful range of material is explored. It is a very inclusive course and as a participant you are both supported and challenged to learn new things!”