La Camerata Chromatica
The ensemble
A swirl of colours
A vocal and instrumental ensemble with a strong artistic identity, La Camerata Chromatica was formed with a common mission: to spread chromatic music from the 16th and 17th centuries, a repertoire that has been unfairly overlooked.
La Camerata Chromatica has taken on this mission with a dynamic, passionate and innovative approach, striving to bring these recently rediscovered masterpieces within the reach of as many people as possible. The ensemble brings together instruments, singers and solo organ, and reveals the supernatural sonorities of ancient instruments: voices, recorders, violas da gamba, historic great organ...
Thanks to this variety of timbres, their great expressiveness and a long period of research, its musicians bring the poetic power of their repertoire back into the light of day, plunging us into an unknown universe, at once dazzling and mysterious, virtuoso and sensual, passionate and experimental.
Local and European prospects
La Camerata Chromatica has had the opportunity to perform throughout all Europe: Torroella de Montgri Festival (Spain), Athens Conservatory (Greece), Fel!x Festival in Cologne (Germany), Vivat Curlandia! festival at the Riga Early Music Centre (Latvia), Internationale Händel-Festspiele in Göttingen (Germany), etc.
The ensemble also has a local perspective, and has already collaborated with a number of cultural institutions in France, including the CCR d'Ambronay, the Sinfonia en Périgord festival, the Mars en Baroque festival in Marseille, the Agend'Arts association in Croix-Rousse, and the Amis de l'orgue de Charolles association...
Selected by the European Union's Eeemerging+ programme, La Camerata Chromatica has been able to take part in a wide range of outreach activities, bringing its cosmopolitan, multilingual repertoire to a variety of audiences: children, isolated migrants, residents of nursing homes, residents of a psychiatric centre, El Sistema students, etc.
Mediation serving forgotten masterpieces
Chromatic music is the subject of increasingly active scientific research. Highly experimental and avant-garde, it prefigured the impressionist repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries (Wagner, Debussy, Rachmaninov...).
Monopolised at the time by an aristocratic elite, this highly confidential "Musica Reservata" was played in the great princely courts of Europe: Ferrara, Naples, Rome, Paris, London, etc. In profound disagreement with this elitist connotation, La Camerata Chromatica has set itself the mission of widely disseminating these exceptional works, in the conviction that any listener, whatever his or her origin, culture or tradition, can immediately experience their unforgettable beauty.
The ensemble often takes the form of a concert with commentary, in which it provides specific keys to listening, chosen for each programme and each audience. These comments are sometimes illustrated with sound examples, and are always expressed in terms that can be understood by everyone, avoiding any technical or ambiguous wording.
The rediscovery of the lost
During the Renaissance, music was still predominantly oral: the modern distinction between reading, composition, improvisation and ornamentation did not yet make sense. To embody its repertoire more authentically, La Camerata Chromatica has chosen to adopt a stance that is both archaeological and living, and is attempting to scientifically reconstitute this vanished oral tradition.
With this in mind, the ensemble is travelling with a rare and experimental instrument, a microtonal digital organ, which diffuses with perfect fidelity the sound of the pipes of a genuine historic great organ. This is one of the ensemble's distinctive features, and its approach is an original one: technological innovation at the service of historically informed interpretation.
Chromatic music is based on Greek musical theory, and La Camerata Chromatica also performs ancient Greek works rediscovered by archaeologists in modern times. Wishing to establish a strong connection between this ancient repertoire and contemporary creation, Benjamin Delale composes and improvises entirely new chromatic works in the style of the Renaissance.
A world of sound sublime and poetic
La Camerata Chromatica's programmes alternate between a variety of formations: full ensemble (with or without organ), small vocal groups, instrumental groups (organ, viol and recorders), accompanied solo voice (singer and viola da gamba)... In addition, a small part of the programmes is always dedicated to keyboard polyphony. This diversity of dynamics and sound textures takes listeners on a journey through ever-changing atmospheres, and refreshes their listening experience.
Chromatic music is governed by the laws of the poem: the ensemble therefore favours clear, precise and natural pronunciation of the text, as well as great fidelity to the accentuation and internal rhythm of the language. The instrumentalists, for their part, manage to imitate the spoken language convincingly and naturally, creating a world of illusion in which voice and instruments are equally declamatory of the poem.