The Renaissance Singers’ open workshops give anyone with some experience of singing and an ability to read music an opportunity to be coached on Renaissance repertoire by leading practitioners in the field of Early Music. The first workshop of 2025 focuses on Josquin des Prez.

Josquin’s name became synonymous with compositional excellence in his own lifetime, drawing praise from men as diverse as Castiglione, Rabelais, Ronsard, Pope Leo X and Martin Luther. The fascination with his music, in all its breadth and diversity, endures today. For modern singers, much of it is challenging and requires perseverance to get completely ‘under its skin’, but is arguably all the more rewarding for it!

This practical workshop explores how Josquin and his contemporary singer-composers actually visualised their music and the compositional techniques they employed in a musical language so very different from our own.

Focusing on extracts from Josquin's Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, the session involves an introduction to singing from mensural notation using historical tools such as the Guidonian Hand and six-note solmisation. We will approach Renaissance repertoire via its fundamentals - an approach to performance practice which is grounded in understanding the historical process.

About Tim Braithwaite

Tim Braithwaite is an English singer, conductor, and music theorist based in the Netherlands. In 2025, Tim was appointed artistic director of the Gramophone Award-winning ensemble Cappella Pratensis, a Dutch vocal ensemble specialising in the performance of Renaissance polyphony from historical notation. The ensemble has been praised for its practical explorations of historical performance practices, particularly its engagement with historical notation and traditions of improvised counterpoint.

As a singer, Tim maintains an international concert schedule, appearing both as a soloist and with leading ensembles in the field of Early Music, including Amsterdam Baroque, Vox Luminis, and the Nederlandse Bachvereniging. Alongside his work as a performer, Tim teaches Renaissance counterpoint and analysis at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, as well as classes on historical solmisation and singing from historical notation. He is widely sought after as a visiting teacher, having delivered workshops and lectures at universities and conservatoires throughout the UK, USA, and Europe.