Seminar: Helen Roberts and Jamie Savan

Public Research Seminar: Helen Roberts and Jamie Savan (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire)
Winds of change: the role of Coventry’s waits from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries

Coventry’s waits were a mainstay of the city’s cultural life, contributing to religious festivals and processions, as well as secular feasts and celebrations of the guilds and craft fellowships. They were integral to Coventry’s performance of civic and ecclesiastical ritual, as a public articulation of a well-ordered city, even (or especially) during times of profound political and religious change.

We examine the paper trail left by this ensemble over two centuries and explore aspects of the changing urban environment in which their music would have been heard. The sources are often fragmentary, leading us to explore strategies for recovering their lost instrumentation and repertory. This work forms part of a larger, AHRC-funded project, Aural Histories: Coventry c.1451-1642, which explores the experience of music in late-medieval and early-modern Coventry through VR reconstructions of its lost performance spaces.

Helen Roberts is a Research Associate at RBC with research interests in 16th/17th-century English performance practices. As a professional cornettist, she performs with period instrument ensembles internationally and is also managing editor of Septenary Editions.

Jamie Savan is Professor of Music at RBC with research interests in historical performance practice and applied organology. As a performer he is best known for his work as founder-director of The Gonzaga Band and, together with Helen Roberts, is also a member of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts.

Running time approx. two hours and 30 minutes

Our Public Research Seminars are held simultaneously at RBC and online via Zoom. A link to view the seminar online will be sent to you once a ticket is booked, should you wish to join the virtual session.