Certain periods of art are forever linked to certain places. Renaissance art and Florence. Impressionism and Paris. Abstract Expressionism and New York. Some musicians think that the Flemish countries in the 15th and 16th centuries deserve a similar status for early music.
“One reason we chose this topic is that in the 1400s and 1500s, and even into the 1600s, almost every musical center in Europe was run by someone from the Low Countries,” says Madison soprano Cheryl Bensman Rowe, who co-directs the upcoming eighth annual Madison Early Music Festival with her husband, University of Wisconsin-Madison baritone Paul Rowe. The festival, which starts Saturday and runs through July 14, will specialize in “The Age of the Netherlanders.”