The De Caelis Ensemble presents a tribute to feminine spirituality - a programme around the manuscript of Las Huelgas (a music manuscript or codex from Spain circa 1300), oriental songs and Sufi songs, through the prism of desert spirituality.

With this album, the famous vocal ensemble De Caelis invites us on a journey to the desert. It is to make us hear the song of those who, one day, chose to isolate themselves from the world to seek God.

Following the first Christian hermits (around the 4th century) who found refuge in the desert of Thebes in Egypt, the term Thébaïde is any place, even symbolic, where one isolates oneself to lead a life of asceticism and of prayers. Presented here are pieces from the repertoire that the Cistercian nuns of Las Huelgas sang in the 14th century, Sufi songs evoking the deserts of the Orient, as well as two contemporary pieces. Through this music from yesterday and today, the voices of the singers of De Caelis invite us to rediscover through our senses the mineral world of the desert, not as a place of death, but as a place of life, conducive to meditation and reflection, a return to oneself which allows listening to Others and opening up to the world.

Founded in 1998 under the direction of Laurence Brisset, De Caelis is an ensemble of a cappella women's voices specialising in the performance of medieval repertoire. Fascinated by this little-known repertoire, its interpretative work is based on knowledge of the sources, notations and context of the works. As an experimenter and researcher, it likes to provoke unusual encounters between the masters of the past and those of today, generating resonances between two innovative and creative eras. It is also interested in other traditions, in this case Arabic song. It is the 2016 winner of the Liliane Bettencourt prize for choral singing.

Tracks:
1. Flavit auster
2. Clausule Mulier misterio/Mulierum
3. O beata solitudino (feat. Alia Sellami)
4. Mulier misterio/Mulierum
5. Fil-Layli (feat. Alia Sellami)
6. Ecce ancilla domini (feat. Alia Sellami)
7. Yaqine
8. Amor Vincens/Marie preconio/Aptatur
9. Iconostase
10. In hoc ortus - Interlude
11. Qasida Burda (feat. Alia Sellami)
12. Angelorum
13. In tempesta nocte (feat. Alia Sellami)
14. Mulieris marcens/Mulierum /
15. Inchad et Tunc ad locum (feat. Alia Sellami)
16. Epilogue