Album
’t Schrickelik Tempeest
On 1 August 1674 Utrecht was struck by a great summer storm. The storm, later dubbed ’t Schrickelik Tempeest, “the Terrible Tempest”, destroyed roofs and towers throughout the city, and the nave of the Dom Church collapsed. Three centuries earlier, Geert Groote had prophesied the fall of the Dom Tower in his treatise Contra turrim Traiectensem. The tower survived the storm and still stands.
With this album the Pulse Ensemble lauds and laments the building and collapse of human constructions.
A selection of our concert programmes
2026
Utrecht Early Music Festival, International Van Wassenaer Competition
Lais and lamentations
We explore many facets of the lament in the late Middle Ages. The plainchant Fuerunt mihi lachrimae (Psalm 42) is followed by Jacobus Clemens non Papa, who in his Vox in Rama sets to music Rachel’s grief at the loss of her son. Lament also had a place outside the church: the French king Charles d’Anjou describes unrequited love in La plus noble emprise, a song in the disorderly ‘lai’ genre, and Johannes Ockeghem mourns the death of his colleague Gilles Binchois in Planctus sur la mort de Binchois.
2025
Utrecht Early Music Festival, Fringe
Masterpieces from lament to love song
We perform some of our Greatest Hits: laments and love songs that we count among our personal favourites, with music by Josquin des Prez, Antoine Brumel and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, among others. Our alto Daan also sings Claudio Monteverdi’s lament of lost love, accompanied by Ernesto on the theorbo.
2024
Börzsöny Baroque Days (Hungary)
Pieśń Naszych Korzeni (Jarosław, Poland)
Quam Pulchra Es: Motetti missales in Milan Cathedral
At the end of the fifteenth century a highly unusual treatment of the Holy Mass took place in Milan Cathedral: the practice of motetti missales, in which the singers replaced the traditional texts of the Ordinary and Propers of the Mass with a cycle of about eight motets. We reconstruct this phenomenon by combining Gaspar van Weerbeke’s Marian motet cycle Quam pulchra es with Ambrosian chant from Milan.
2022
Klassiek op het Amstelveld, Amsterdam
Oosterkerk, Amsterdam
Ukraine and the Low Countries
In response to the war in Ukraine, and in collaboration with the Ukrainian violinist Yuri Shundyak, we combine laments by Flemish polyphonists such as Guillaume Dufay with Ukrainian Cossack songs.
2020
Alte Musik in Leubnitz
St Catherine’s Cathedral, Utrecht
Traiecti te chorus flagitat! | Pleading for a miracle
The city of Utrecht has a rich history of the veneration of saints. We travel through time, from a meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1546 to folk songs of the twentieth century, through works by composers such as Jacob Obrecht, the Utrecht bishop Radbod and Herman Strategier.
2019
International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht
Domstorm
In the Michaelskapel in the Dom Tower we commemorate how in 1674 part of the church was destroyed by a terrible summer storm. The storm is at the heart of this concert, with polyphony by Nicolas Gombert and Cipriano de Rore, among others, songs by Hadewijch of Brabant, and plainchant sequences from the Utrecht Prosarium (c. 1300). We also sing a Romantic work by Richard Hol and Kurt Bikkembergs’s Canzone 164 di Francesco Petrarca, written especially for us.
2018
Francigena International Arts Festival (Tuscany, Italy)
Sweelinck and Palestrina
In collaboration with the Cugnon Project we explore the connections between the two contemporaries, and their influence on the composers who came after them.