Dionysus Consort was founded in 1999 at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. It devotes itself to the performance of renaissance music, exploring all the magic & poetry of the 15th and 16th centuries.The repertoire embraces music from England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and The Low Countries, both sacred and secular, and is performed using manuscripts and printed collections from that period. The ensemble has been coached by Peter van Heyguen, Sébastien Marq, Dorothea Winter and Pedro Memelsdorff. Dionysus Consort has performed in Holland and Spain and played in the Early Music Festivals of Barcelona and Utrecht.
Dionysus Consort performs with a renaissance recorder consort (6 instruments) which was crafted by Adriana Breukink in 2002 and modeled after the Bassano originals (16th Century) which are today in Brussels and Vienna. The recorders are: Alto in G, Alto in G, Tenor in C, Tenor in C, Tenor in C, and Bass in F.
In the 16th Century appeared music-treatises that describe the use of recorders in families: the so-called recorder consort. Sebastian Virdung (Musica getutscht, Basel, 1511), Martin Agricola (Musica Instrumentalis Deutsch, Wittenburg, 1529), Sylvestro Ganassi (Opera Intitulata Fontegara, Venice, 1535), Philippe Jambe de Fer (Epitome Musical, Lyon, 1556), Ludovico Zacconi (Practica di Musica, Venice, 1596) mention three different recorder sizes for playing all the consort repertoire: descant in G (called discant, discantus, sopran, soprano, dessus, canto), tenor in C (called tenor, altus, haute conts & taille, tenore) and bass in F (called bassus, basso, bas). Only Hieronymous Cardanus (De Musica, 1546) adds a soprano in D to the three other sizes.
Dionysus Consort performs with a renaissance recorder consort (6 instruments) which was crafted by Adriana Breukink in 2002 and modeled after the Bassano originals (16th Century) which are today in Brussels and Vienna. The recorders are: Alto in G, Alto in G, Tenor in C, Tenor in C, Tenor in C, and Bass in F.
In the 16th Century appeared music-treatises that describe the use of recorders in families: the so-called recorder consort. Sebastian Virdung (Musica getutscht, Basel, 1511), Martin Agricola (Musica Instrumentalis Deutsch, Wittenburg, 1529), Sylvestro Ganassi (Opera Intitulata Fontegara, Venice, 1535), Philippe Jambe de Fer (Epitome Musical, Lyon, 1556), Ludovico Zacconi (Practica di Musica, Venice, 1596) mention three different recorder sizes for playing all the consort repertoire: descant in G (called discant, discantus, sopran, soprano, dessus, canto), tenor in C (called tenor, altus, haute conts & taille, tenore) and bass in F (called bassus, basso, bas). Only Hieronymous Cardanus (De Musica, 1546) adds a soprano in D to the three other sizes.