'One of the highlights of presenting it is hearing from listeners who tell me they never imagined this music could be for them...' Vlad Smishkewych celebrates 10 years of Vox Nostra, RTÉ lyric fm's much-loved early music programme.
It's 6:45 on a Sunday morning. The red "On Air" light hasn't yet gone on, and I'm checking over my running order for Vox Nostra one last time. Should Hildegard come before the troubadour song, or after? Then an email pops into the inbox. One of my early birds has requested "something from medieval Denmark"—and suddenly the problem is solved. It's the first of many happy chances, forks in the road, and unexpected encounters along the musical pilgrimage we'll take over the next three hours on RTÉ lyric fm.
Music as pilgrimage: it's a thought I often have when I settle into the presenter's chair for Vox Nostra. Officially, the programme explores music through historically informed performances: Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, occasionally venturing into the Classical period (or even the Romantic on early instruments, oh my!). But somewhere along the way I realised that description isn't really what the show feels like to me—or, I suspect, to many of the people who tune in each Sunday morning. Instead, it feels rather like setting out on a musical Camino.
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Listen to Vox Nostra with Vlad Smishkewych
I've been fortunate enough to walk stretches of the Camino de Santiago, and what has stayed with me isn't simply the destination. It's the rhythm of the journey itself: conversations that happen by chance, villages I'd never otherwise have discovered, the landscape unfolding one step at a time. It's what happens when you slow down and the world begins to reveal details that somehow escaped your notice when life was rushing past at 120 kilometres an hour. Listening can be like that too.
Music written five hundred, or even a thousand years ago doesn't compete for our attention. It simply invites us to stop for a while and listen. In an age measured by speed, efficiency and the endless scroll, I think many of us are quietly looking for experiences that move at a more human pace. We don't necessarily need more information; we need moments of attention, and we need breathing space.
Sunday mornings have always seemed to me to offer exactly that possibility. There's a unique atmosphere before the new week begins, a small nook where time seems to expand a little. That's the space I hope Vox Nostra inhabits.
- here with Carlos Núñez in Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.
The programme begins gently. Listeners might be putting on the kettle, walking the dog or simply enjoying a slower start to Sunday…no need to rush them. Chant, troubadour song, Renaissance polyphony or the warm burnished sounds of early brasswinds - music that's learned to breathe over centuries - accompany those quiet rituals with remarkable ease.
As the morning unfolds, the programme reaches a few familiar landmarks. Bach for Breakfast has become a Sunday ritual for many listeners, followed by the Morning Motet, the Sunday Sonata and the Morning Madrigal. Like stopping places on a pilgrimage, each offers a moment of arrival before the journey continues.
When Vox Nostra first went on air in 2016, one of the questions I was asked was whether I worried about running out of things to say about music that's hundreds - or even thousands - of years old. The truth is, I've always had exactly the opposite problem!
Every week I'm struck by another unexpected connection. It might be a medieval pilgrim's song that suddenly sheds light on how we travel today, or an eighteenth-century voyage of exploration that leads, unexpectedly, to Barbara Strozzi's seventeenth-century Venice. A forgotten manuscript surviving eight centuries before finding its way onto a music stand in twenty-first-century Ireland. Or a melody crossing borders, languages and centuries to tell us something surprisingly contemporary about ourselves. Those connections are what Vox Nostra is about.
The programme has never really been about ticking off composers or historical periods. What interests me most are the stories, because through them, I'm reminded again and again that history is not nearly as distant as we sometimes imagine.
The greatest misconception about early music is that it's about reviving the past, but I don't think it is at all. I think it's about connections, and people. People who fell in love, left home, travelled, worried about the future, laughed with friends, mourned those they had lost, and who searched for meaning in uncertain times. Their world was very different from ours, but their humanity is instantly recognisable. That's one of early music's greatest gifts. It quietly reminds us that we belong to a much longer story.
Music written five hundred, or even a thousand years ago doesn't compete for our attention. It simply invites us to stop for a while and listen.
I've always been fascinated by the ways music, place, language and memory intersect. Whether I'm walking an ancient pilgrimage route, singing music from ages past, making documentaries or presenting a radio programme, I'm really asking the same question: how do we connect with one another across time and distance?
Vox Nostra has become one answer to that question.
One of the highlights of presenting it is hearing from listeners who tell me they never imagined this music could be for them. They might have stumbled across the programme while making breakfast, randomly landed on Vox that morning. Then something catches their ear - a melody, a voice, an unfamiliar instrument - and they stay. Those moments remind me that curiosity is far more important than expertise. You don't need to know the difference between a motet and a madrigal. You don't need to recognise a viol or understand medieval notation. You simply need to be willing to listen, and the rest tends to take care of itself.
Perhaps that's why I keep returning to the image of pilgrimage. A pilgrimage isn't really an escape from ordinary life; if anything, it's a way of returning to it with clearer eyes. You notice more, carry less, and discover that the journey has changed you almost without realising it.
I'd like to think Vox Nostra offers something similar. Not an escape into the past, but an invitation to slow down for a few hours each Sunday morning and discover that beauty, curiosity and human connection don't belong to any one century. They’re as alive today as they were when Hildegard, Machaut, or Bach first set pen to parchment.
So every Sunday morning, before the world speeds up again, it’s great to simply have the chance to stop for a while and listen.
Vox Nostra, RTÉ lyric film, Sundays at 7am - listen back here
