History of the Ensemble
Sequentia is one of the world's most respected and innovative ensembles for medieval music. It is an international group of singers and instrumentalists – united in Paris under the direction of the legendary performer and teacher Benjamin Bagby – dedicated to the performance and recording of Western European music from the period before 1300.
Based on meticulous and original research, intensive rehearsal and long gestation, Sequentia's virtuosic performances are compelling, surprising in their immediacy, and strike the listener with a timeless emotional connection to our own past musical cultures. The size and disposition of the ensemble are determined by the repertoire being performed, ranging between an instrumental/vocal duo to a large vocal ensemble.
Founded by Benjamin Bagby and Barbara Thornton (1950-1998), Sequentia can look back on 50 years of international concert tours, performing throughout Europe, North and South America, India, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia. Sequentia has brought to life over seventy innovative concert programmes that encompass the entire spectrum of medieval music, in addition to the creation of music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, the Cividale Planctus Marie, the Bordesholmer Marienklage, and Heinrich von Meissen's Frauenleich (several of which were filmed for television). The work of the ensemble is divided between a small touring ensemble of vocal and instrumental soloists, and a larger ensemble of voices for the performance of Hildegard von Bingen's works or Latin liturgical polyphony. After 25 years based in Cologne, Germany, Sequentia's home has been in Paris since 2001.
Sequentia's comprehensive discography of more than thirty recordings spans the entire Middle Ages. In 1981, the ensemble began to release the first of many LP's and CD's which encompass the entire spectrum of medieval musical practice. Many of these recordings – including the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen (9 CDs) have received awards: the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis (for Vox Iberica,1993), two Netherlands Edison Awards (for Hildegard von Bingen recordings, 1987 and 1998), a French Disque d'Or (1996), the CHOC of Le Monde de la Musique (2002) and Diapason d'Or (1995 and 1999). Sequentia's best-selling CD, Canticles of Ecstasy,has sold more than 500.000 copies worldwide and was nominated for a Grammy Award as best choral recording. Recordings made by Sequentia have been integrated into the soundtracks of several major films, including Ridley Scott's 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
Sequentia has inspired new generations of young performers, trained in professional courses given by Benjamin Bagby and other members of the ensemble. As an extension of this work, Bagby taught several generations of young artists in the masters degree programme for medieval music performance practice, which he helped create in at the Université de Paris – Sorbonne (2005-2017) and then at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, Germany (2018-2025).
The past decades have seen a growing corpus of Sequentia performances and recordings centered on the importance of oral tradition, story-telling, and the earliest musical documents of medieval Europe. These programmes are all grouped under the banner of 'The Lost Songs Project' and have their roots in the ground-breaking work which Bagby has done with his reconstrction of the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf epic, which he performed from 1990 until 2025. His performance was filmed and released on DVD in 2006.
In 2002, Sequentia released an acclaimed 2-CD set of sung tales from medieval Iceland: The Rheingold Curse: A Germanic Saga of Greed and Vengeance from the Medieval Icelandic Edda, on the Marc Aurel Edition label. Other recent programs, such as Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (released on the BMG Classics/DHM label in 2004), and Chant Wars, (SONY-BMG / 2005, a co-production with the Parisian ensemble Dialogos) have received wide international critical acclaim. Among the most recent recordings, Fragments for the End of Time, featuring apocalyptic songs from early medieval Germany, Saxony and Aquitaine (released on the Raumklang label in 2008) and Boethius: Songs of Consolation, released on Glossa in 2018).
The ensemble will celebrate its 50th anniversary in April 2027.