Timeless tunes: 'The Angels Sang with Mirth & Glee' features Christmas music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance

Música Antigua de Albuquerque sets itself apart from other holiday performances with its repertoire of Christmas music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance using period instruments.

Its show “The Angels Sang with Mirth & Glee” will have two performances in Albuquerque on Sunday, Dec. 15, and Sunday, Dec. 22, at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, and a performance in Santa Fe on Saturday, Dec. 21, at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church.

The program will feature rarely performed music from England, Germany, France, Italy and Spain from many unknown composers. Known composers that will be part of the program include Michael Praetorius, Christopher Tye, Bartolomé Cárceres, Hans Leo Hassler and Gilles Binchois.

Música Antigua is comprised of Hovey Corbin, Dennis Davies-Wilson, Ruth Helgeson, Curtis Storm, Colleen Sheinberg and Art Sheinberg.

“We’ve been playing early music since 1978 and by early music we mean mostly stuff before 1600, we delve a little bit into the 17th century, but mostly stuff earlier than that, so mostly medieval and Renaissance music,” Art Sheinberg said. “It’s become a big tradition. Early music, for some reason, goes well with the holiday season. There’s glorious music written for the holiday season, going back to ancient times.”

The performance is made up of vocal and instrumental compositions.

“The music is in lots of different languages,” Art Sheinberg said. “There’s Latin, of course, a lot for the religious music, but on this concert, there’s some Spanish and some German, and the music features a lot of interesting old instruments. So viola da gamba and the recorders are amongst the most familiar of the instruments, but they also have some very unusual instruments, such as the gemshorn from the medieval time period.”

Other historic instruments used in the performance are the lute, vielle, rebec, shawm, vihuela de mano and hammered dulcimer.

“We have approximately 40 to 50 instruments on stage for the six performers,” Art Sheinberg said. “Everybody plays a lot of different instruments. Another one of the unusual instruments with an interesting name is the sackbut, which is a predecessor of the modern day trombone.”

The performance also features poetry readings of old English poetry about the Christmas season.

“Each part of the program is introduced by a poetry reading that’s done by actor Kathy Wimmer,” Art Sheinberg said. “She’s a professional actor and she’s been doing this for many years. And that poetry ranges from the 15th century to the 17th century.”