This week on Harmonia we take a look at performances of The King's Noyse, Sequentia, and the Blue Heron Renaissance Choir at the 2005 Boston Early Music Festival in our third and final installment.

Violinist David Douglass is often a busy man at the Boston Early Music Festival, playing and directing in multiple concerts and orchestras.  He's also the director of the acclaimed Renaissance violin band, The King's Noyse.  We spoke with Douglass about The King's Noyse concert at the festival this year, entitled "The High Art of German Renaissance Folk Music."

"It's a German program from the 15th and 16th centuries, focusing on real life, with songs about, you know, how wonderful it is to drink."

Singers William Hite and Sumner Thompson gave a theatrical performance of a 16th century German song about such a theme as one would find in "real life:"  a guy squabbling with his gardener.  Douglass said of Hite and Thompson, "they did everything I asked them to do and more."

One of the top highlights of the festival was a stunning concert by the renowned medieval music ensemble Sequentia.  The theme was "Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper," an exploration of secular European song inspired by a medieval collection of lyrics known as "The Cambridge Songs."

In his program notes, Sequentia director Ben Bagby suggests that the Cambridge songs maybe have represented part of the performance repertoire of a particularly gifted Rhineland harper-singer.  The concert combined pieces from this source with other very early examples of Latin song.

"Music for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian the first and his daughter Marguerite of Austria" was the theme the festvial concert by The Blue Heron Renaissance Choir, directed by Scott Metcalfe.  The program featured the 16th century vocal polyphony of Franco-Flemish composers such as Josquin Desprez, de la Rue and Heinrich Isaac.

Thus completes our review of the 2005 Boston Early Music Festival.  Until next year!