The Dukes Music

The Dukes Music is Duquesne University's Early Music Ensemble. Members of the ensemble perform primarily on period-style instruments and read from original prints or manuscripts when possible. The Dukes Music often collaborates with professional mentors from Pittsburgh and frequently performs off-campus in churches or other appropriate performance spaces.

Repertoire includes many unfamiliar works by composers outside the mainstream and has featured pieces by Isabella Leonarda, the Chevalier St. Georges, Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, and José de Orejón y Aparicio. Music by more well-known composers such as Telemann, Corelli, Buxtehude, Monteverdi, and Handel are also performed.

The ensemble takes its name from the University's namesake, the Marquis Michel-Ange Duquesne de Menneville (1700–1778). Duquesne served in Québec as governor-general of New France from 1752 to 1755 and founded the city of Pittsburgh, constructing a fortress at what is now Point State Park. Duquesne surely knew the rich tradition of church and concert music of his time. The Dukes Music seeks to renew and revive music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, using instruments and performance styles that the Marquis himself might have recognized.

Enrollment is by invitation only.