La Dame à la licorne

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Taste, hearing, sight, smell, touch, and à mon seul désir… a series of tapestries woven in Flanders at the end of the fifteenth century and rediscovered in 1841 give this concert its name. These depict the five human senses and an inscrutable sixth (sense or tapestry is much debated), which could refer to spiritual longing. The enigmatic symbolism behind the unicorn (most often representing chastity and holiness) and desire was echoed in other famous works that bridge the gap between these tapestries and the music on this program (Hunt of the Unicorn first recorded in 1680—over a hundred years after being woven—in the hands of François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld; Valois Tapestries c.1580; Mortlake Tapestry designed in 1625; and so forth).