Rassurez-vous, je n’ai pas l’intention de contribuer à l’histoire de la musique. Seulment je voulais insinuer qu’on a peut-être tort de jouer toujours le mêmes choses, ce qui peut faire croire à de très honnêtes gens que la musique est née d’hier, tandis qu’elle a un Passé dont il faudrait remuer les cendres: elles contiennent cette flamme inéteignable à laquelle notre Présent devra toujours une part de sa splendeur.
Claude Debussy, Monsieur Croche antidilettante

The ensemble MUSICA RICERCATA, founded by Michael Stüve in collaboration with an international group of professional musicians based in Florence, originated in 1987. Through their interest in music of distant epochs and styles they created innovative and unique concert programmes, publicly performing over 1100 compositions from all eras of music history. Musica Ricercata’s interactive digital archives present these compositions in the context of its concert programmes.  Researchers may explore the content according to composers, authors, titles, musical and poetic genres and epochs. Furthermore, access to many of our concert recordings of these compositions is included as well as the possibility of connecting to and visualizing their original sources which are preserved in libraries worldwide.