Harmonia Stellarum Houston
While today orchestras and choirs, even for early music, typically exist as separate entities, Harmonia Stellarum Houston follows in the tradition of the ensembles that originally performed some of the greatest masterworks of the 17th and 18th centuries—a group of vocal and instrumental virtuosos. As such, HSH seeks to inspire, entertain, and educate its audience with meaningful, scholarly informed performances of well-known and newly discovered masterworks particularly of the Italian and Austrian/German repertoire.
This inaugural season will include highlights from Monteverdi’s unprecedented Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi for eight voices, two violins, and large continuo group. Our recent recording of newly discovered sonatas for chalumeau and basso continuo by Veracini and Sammartini with Austrian historical clarinet virtuoso Ernst Schlader demonstrates HSH’s goal to share our curiosity in repertoire and instruments off the beaten path with our audience. Our mission is to ignite a passion for early music in new audiences, particularly historically underserved communities defined by race, culture, sexual orientation, gender, gender variance, and nationalities.
The ancient idea that the harmony of music reflects the proportions of the universe was the basis for music theory from its very beginnings well into the mid-17th century, including the Musurgia universalis (1650) by German polymath Athanasius Kircher. In his analysis, the “choir of choirs” in the musical universe is the harmony of the stars—harmonia stellarum.