Biography
Musica Antigua sustains the legacy of Atrium Musicae de Madrid through connections that reach beyond shared stylistic choices. Eduardo Paniagua, who established the ensemble, performed with Atrium alongside his brothers Luis and Carlos as well as its senior founder, Gregorio Paniagua. Both ensembles have maintained their base in Madrid. In 1994 Eduardo launched Musica Antigua together with the Pneuma label, setting the family’s characteristically ambitious objective of recording and performing the entire manuscript of the Cantigas of Santa Maria credited to Alfonso X, the Wise, the poet king. Ensemble members specialize in vocal and instrumental performance on reproductions of period instruments whose designs derive from portraits in ancient manuscripts and from iconography spanning the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. The group additionally devotes itself to previously unrecorded Andalusian repertory drawn from the intertwined Moslem, Christian, and Jewish societies whose traditions flourished during the opening centuries of the second millennium. Critics singled out the ensemble’s album Jardin de Al Andalus, devoted to Hispanic Moslem music, for its use of resonant old buildings and other unconventional, sometimes echoey recording sites.
Albums
