Expressing desire, lamenting loss, and castigating the cruel: some medieval songs have little to do with the stereotypical image of the Middle Ages… Pin Me To Your Heart is a concert program that seeks to bring the audience into a more human dialogue with this time and its people, realizing that much of the music from this era served the same role it does today. Not only are the songs collected here incredible gems of music, but they also transport poetry that tugs at the heart and feels as urgent today as it must have eight hundred years ago.
“Pin me to your heart” is an alternate translation of the iconic verse from the Song of Songs (“set me as a seal upon your heart”) and was understood in the medieval era as both a sendup of erotic love as well as an allegory of Christ’s relationship to the Church. Double meanings abound in medieval art and these “biblical” poems continue to inspire lovers around the world, hundreds of years later. Combined with death laments, and searing sermons by composer-theologian Philip the Chancellor, Pin Me To Your Heart promises to illuminate the rich emotional quality of an artform which was deeply connected to the individual while at the same time managing to transcend into the realms of the perpetual.