Broken Music
Broken Music is the consort's commissioning project: one new work a year, written by a living composer for viola da gamba, theorbo, hurdy-gurdy and sackbut. The instruments are old; the assignment is not. Each composer gets the band for a week, the Dance Book for context, and no instruction beyond the project's name.
Three commissions exist — Mabel Torrance's Hedge Music, Dev Chatterjee's A Civil Noise, and Ines Roque's Lanternlight, which films this winter. The fourth will be announced when its composer has met the hurdy-gurdy.
Why old instruments
A broken consort was the sound of things not matching on purpose — bowed against plucked, wheel against slide. Four hundred years later that palette is still strange enough to be new, and composers keep proving it: none of the commissions so far sounds like early music, and none could have been written for a string quartet.
For composers
The consort reads proposals every spring. Write to us with a page of anything — a sketch, a question, an argument with the project's premise. The one requirement is a working knowledge of what a hurdy-gurdy will and will not forgive, which is best acquired in person.
“None of the commissions so far sounds like early music, and none could have been written for a string quartet.”
Tapestry