A Concert for Esther Inglis

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Join us at St Cecilia’s Hall on Sunday 20th October to celebrate the quatercentenary of Esther Inglis’ death with a concert inspired by her life and work!

About A Concert for Esther Inglis

Listed Under Music Events

A Concert for Esther Inglis celebrates this extraordinary Franco-Scottish woman artist and marks the 400th anniversary of her death, here in the city that was her home for most of her life. The programme on Sunday 20th October, inspired by her life and work, will be performed in Edinburgh's beautiful St Cecilia's Hall by Héloïse Bernard (soprano) and Eric Thomas (lute), and by the White Rose Ensemble: Sally Carr (soprano), Juliette Philogene (piano), Calum Robertson (clarinet & bass-clarinet).

Inglis is a uniquely important artist and writer. Some of her work is currently on exhibition in the National Library of Scotland's exhibition "Renaissance: Scotland and Europe". Her family left France as refugees and settled in Edinburgh in 1574. Here, she grew up bilingual and acquired the skills in calligraphy, drawing, and embroidery that combined to create her extraordinary manuscript books. Contemporaries called her 'mistress of the golden pen', and one Scottish poet of the 1600s acclaimed her as nothing less than ‘glore of thy sexe, and mirakill to men’.

Esther’s miniature self-portraits often feature a lute, and this quatercentenary concert presents a programme of sixteenth century French and Scottish lute-songs and psalms, alongside two 21st century compositions in honour of Inglis, specially commissioned for the White Rose Ensemble. There are short songs by Paschal de L’Estocart, Guillaume Boni and Claude Le Jeune, setting texts that Esther Inglis copied into her exquisite manuscripts: Antoine de Chandieu’s "Octonaires sur la vanité et inconstance du monde", and the "Quatrains du sieur de Pybrac", as well as anonymous Scottish settings of spiritual poems by Inglis’ contemporaries Elizabeth Melville and Margaret Cunningham. The White Rose Ensemble will perform two works specially commissioned for them, from the composer Sheena Phillips (b.1958) - "Un Petit Pseautier" (2019), setting poems by Inglis herself which frame selections from the Huguenot psalms and "Nine Haiku for Esther Inglis" (2024), setting poems by Gerda Stevenson (b.1956), from her acclaimed collection "Quines: Poems in Tribute to Women of Scotland" (2018).
The concert is free, but booking via eventbrite is strongly recommended in order to be sure of a seat.

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