Musical artworks from the Renaissance and Reformation periods are juxtaposed with objects from our current time: Lute pieces as well as vocal pieces by the ensemble Novocanto. And from there we quickly switch over to the present.

There are numerous historic exhibits from the City of Bern and the early Confederation on display in the Bernisches Historisches Museum: plunder from the war with the Burgundian Duke Karl dem Kühnen, at whose court at the time a rich musical culture flourished. This is an opportunity to place music from that time side by side with these objects: musical renderings of Guillaume Dufay and Antoine Busnoys’s Masses whose Cantus-Firmus background is the soldiers’ song «L’homme armé», sung by Ensemble Novocanto.

Juxtaposed to this, in the exhibition rooms dedicated to the period of the Bernese Reformation, the sound of lute music can be heard alternating with vocal pieces from two early sixteenth century composers working in Bern: Johannes Wannenmacher and Cosmas Alder. In contrast, the young Zurich resident Michal Muggli composed the piece «Ein Zeit vertreiben mit Kurtzweil» specifically for the event. The underlying text by Josua Stegmann from the early seventeenth century focuses on the cycle of nature, as well as on transience and death.