Arte Minima recovers, performs and records the Portuguese polyphony of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries from the original manuscripts and prints — music that, for the most part, has never or rarely been heard in our time.
Founded in 2011 by Pedro Sousa Silva, the ensemble works directly from primary sources, without the mediation of modernised editions, and carries that philological choice into every aspect of performance: music theory, instruments and historical tunings. This is where the core of its work comes from — first modern performances of repertoire that existed only in archives: fifteen unpublished pieces from Braga Cathedral and the Monastery of São Bento da Vitória on In Splendoribus, the first recording devoted to Francisco de Santa Maria, and the complete motets of Vicente Lusitano, finished in 2026.
Since 2021 Arte Minima has recorded on average one album a year, released by Pan Classics and note one music and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Radio France, SWR2 Kultur and Antena 2.
On stage it appears regularly at the leading Portuguese festivals — Temporada Música em São Roque, Festival de Música dos Capuchos, Spatia Resonantia and the music festivals of Leiria and Bragança — and abroad in Madrid (Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro, 2024), Helsinki (Aurore Festivaali, 2025) and Naples (Fondazione Turchini, 2025).
«A beautiful moment of enjoyment.»
★★★★½ Diana Ferreira, Público
«The performances are admirable. The ensemble is outstanding.»
Johan van Veen, MusicWeb International
The second volume of the complete recording of Vicente Lusitano's motets brings together, on a double album, the sixteen five-voice motets that open the Roman print of 1551. Released by note one music, it completes the cycle begun in 2025 with the motets for six and eight voices.
Guided musical visits to a repertoire exactly five hundred years old: the polyphonic motets printed in the 1520s, sight-read from full-scale facsimiles, with continuous mediation.
A documentary film and book-CD built around the Kyries Tenebrarum, an early sixteenth-century work associated with the Portuguese Royal Chapel and now kept in the National Library of Naples. Recorded in July 2026 at the Church of the Misericórdia in Vila do Conde and in the chapel of the Paço dos Duques de Bragança.
Capela do Paço dos Duques de Bragança, Guimarães
Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon
