Martin Kemp and Robert Hollingworth

Leonardo expert Professor Martin Kemp and director of the Renaissance and contemporary solo-voice ensemble I Fagiolini Robert Hollingworth provide intimate insights into their new performance for Music at Oxford.

The performance in November 2019 sets Leonardo’s profound treatment of religious and secular subjects alongside vocal music that connects with the images, achieving comparable levels of expression and beauty. The same types of subject matter feature in Renaissance and Baroque art and music – the Salvator Mundi, the Madonna and the Last Supper – along with the secular subjects of beloved ladies, grotesque characters and war. Composers under discussion include Josquin (whom Leonardo surely knew in Milan), Monteverdi and Bach as well as translucent works by Howells and Daniel-Lesur. Unconstrained by time and place, and exploring new aural and visual journeys, this project also includes a notable new commission inspired by Leonardo. The event will include short visual and CD excerpts. A performance of the whole project by I Fagiolini at the Sheldonian Theatre will feature in Music at Oxford’s season on 8 November.

Kemp is emeritus professor of the history of art at Trinity College, Oxford. He has written extensively on the life and work of Leonardo including Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man and Leonardo. He is also author of Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon.  Hollingworth is director of I Fagiolini, which he founded in 1986. He also writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3 and is a reader in music at the University of York.

This event is part of Italian day at the festival.

This event lasts 75 minutes.