Description
Recorder virtuosa Genevieve Lacey explores gardens, real and imagined, old and new - from the original 'Pleasure Garden', a series of exquisite musical vignettes by the Dutch nobleman Jacob van Eyck, to contemporary compositions contemplating our relationship with the botanical world.
Jacob Van Eyck's mid-seventeenth-century Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Flute's Pleasure Garden) is a recorder player's treasure trove. A compendium of European popular song from the High Renaissance, Der Fluyten Lust-hof is the largest surviving collection of solo woodwind music from any age.
Van Eyck, blind from birth, was employed by the city of Utrecht chiefly to play the city's carillon, but was famously given a pay rise to wander through Janskerkhof public gardens in the evenings, to entertain passers-by on 'his little flute'. The lusthof, or pleasure garden, was a domesticated version of Arcadia, a public site for recreation, courtship and listening.