I’ve become quite fond of the BBC3’s Early Music Show – broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays, each broadcast being available for a week after the initial play.

Early Music (medieval, Renaissance and Baroque) has always been my preferred period of classical music. Always. Definitely once we finish with Beethoven, I lose interest until the 20th century, except for chamber music. You probably see a theme: I like (relatively) small, clear, focused music – big, heavily orchestrated grandeur is just not my thing. I’m also intrigued by the vitality, dynamism and syncretism of so much medieval and Renaissance music.

This past Sunday’s Early Music Show was particularly charming:

Catherine Bott visits Florence to sample the thriving musical activities of the Accademia San Felice, a cultural association that stages early music concerts and festivals in Tuscany. The academy’s resident early music ensemble, under the direction of Federico Bardazzi, researches, performs and records music ranging from plainchant to the baroque.

Bardazzi told several wonderful stories about the origins of his group, beginning with himself at the age of 13, a young musician asked by a priest in a parish to program the music for a Christmas Mass. He wanted to do chant, but, as he said, he picked the "wrong" one – I am not quite sure why it was "wrong" – and programmed it incorrectly – but it was still marvelous, and he was hooked. His accounts of his group’s attempts to find a space in various churches around Florence, and his commitment to marrying this music to the right sacred space, and even incorporating contemporary idioms, was captivating.

And the music was good, too.