Mont-Saint-Michel and its Bay Music Festival - Via Aeterna

Two of the abbey's halls will be alive with a varied programme of music from the Via Aeterna festival.

In the abbey church

• 11:30 a.m. - Solemn Mass
   
• 2:30 p.m. – Les Métaboles
  Léo Warynski, conductor
  “Après un rêve”
  Firmly rooted in contemporary music, the ensemble Les Métaboles, conducted by Léo Warynski, takes its name from Henri Dutilleux's work Métaboles, which evokes the choir's ability to transform itself according to the repertoire. From Renaissance polyphony to contemporary creations, “Après un rêve” traces a vocal journey from Josquin Desprez to Ondrej Adamek, via Brahms, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel.
   
• 4:30 p.m. – Ensemble Magnétis
  Blandine de Sansal, mezzo-soprano
  Sébastien Bouveyron violin and conductor
  Vivaldi's dramatic genius and his art of enhancing a text through music are expressed in his famous Stabat Mater, a moving meditation that plunges us into the heart of the suffering of Christ and the Virgin Mary during the Crucifixion. Organised in nine movements, the work immediately weaves a rich polyphonic tapestry in which magnificent melodies unfold, until the break introduced in the last part by the violent contrast between the unison of the stinging strings and the gentle voice of the grieving mother - mirroring the text, which associates the mother of Christ with a ‘fountain of love’ (‘fons amoris’).
   
• 6:30 p.m. – Closing concert
  “Mozart’s last masterpiece”
  Mozart: Requiem in D minor, K. 626
  Raquel Camarinha, soprano
  Anne-Lise Polchlopek, alto
  Nicholas Scott, tenor
  Victor Sicard, baritone
  Quator Hanson string quartet
  Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, organ
  Yoan Héreau, conductor and musical arranger
  The result of a mysterious commission received by Mozart at the very end of his life, the famous Requiem was, after the composer's death, adapted into a chamber version for four singers, string quartet and positive organ. Reconstructed from 18th- and 19th-century manuscripts, it is clearly quite close to what the master may have heard before his death and refocuses the listener's attention on the melodic lines.

In the Scriptorium

• 1:30 p.m. – Ensemble Ô
  Laetitia Corcelle, soprano and conductor
  “La Petite Espérance”
  Works by Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Hildegard von Bingen, Bach
  A versatile and close-knit octet of singers, Ensemble Ô, conducted by Laetitia Corcelle, performs the classical vocal repertoire without barriers of style or century. Exploring the great masterpieces of German sacred vocal music, it intertwines the medieval monodies of Hildegard von Bingen (12th century) with the polyphonic works of three great figures of Baroque and Romantic music: Bach, Mendelssohn and Bruckner. The ancestral anxiety of mankind expressed in the Psalms is counterbalanced by the hopeful vision of Hildegard's songs, works of astonishing vitality, bursting with effervescent nature.
   
• 3:30 p.m. – Ensemble Irini
  Lila Hajosi, conductor
  “Maria Nostra”
  Travelling between the Western Middle Ages, Byzantine heritage and Eastern Christian tradition, the Irini vocal ensemble highlights the different figures of the Virgin Mary and her cult, which has a particular resonance in the Mediterranean. Through Greek, Lebanese, Syriac and Cypriot Orthodox chants, excerpts from the Book of Montserrat (14th century, Spain) and 13th-century Italian lauds, from one shore of the Mare Nostrum to the other, Irini celebrates in turn the young girl in bloom of ancient pagan rites, the lamentation of the Mother, an earthly woman confronted with the death of her only child, the Queen of Heaven and the universal Mother interceding for humanity...
   
• 5:30 p.m. - Diabolus in Musica
  Nicolas Sansarlat, conductor
  “Music at Sainte-Chapelle”
  Accompanied by the sounds of medieval instruments, the renowned early music ensemble Diabolus in Musica invites us to discover a work that has been forgotten for nearly 600 years: the Missa Le serviteur by Guillaume Faugues, choirmaster and chaplain at the Sainte-Chapelle in Bourges around 1462, and considered the inventor of the “parody mass”. Probably composed in Italy for the election of Pope Pius II in 1458, this polyphonic mass for four voices and eight singers is distinguished by its high quality of writing, and resonates here with motets by Philippe Basiron, a pupil of the composer. A rich programme offering spiritual elevation.