The ensemble Psallentes ('the singing ones') was founded in 2000 by singer and conductor Hendrik Vanden Abeele. The ensemble seeks out plainchant and associated polyphony from various historical periods. Particular attention is paid to plainchant of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Gradually, polyphony has taken on an increasingly important role within the work of Psallentes. In 2015, they brought a new CD with the ‘Musique en Wallonie’ label, featuring the music of Antoine de Févin, as found in a unique sixteenth-century manuscript from Tournai that contains both plainchant and polyphony. The same combination of plainchant and polyphony in a single manuscript is also found in the Alamire Manuscript B-Br 215-216 of the Royal Library of Belgium. The women singers of Psallentes performed the intense ‘Mater Dolorosa’ from that manuscript at Laus Polyphoniae Antwerp 2015.

Psallentes is also increasingly enthusiastic about partnering with museum projects. Thus the ensemble recorded the full contents of a sixteenth-century processional for the ‘Begijnhof museum’ in Turnhout (starting in 2015) and worked closely with an exhibition about music in Van Eyck’s altarpiece the ‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’ (at the Carmelite convent in Ghent, 2015-2016) and with the new church treasure-museum ‘Teseum’ in Tongeren (2016). They are currently preparing a new project, ‘Salzinnes Saints’, featuring the music from a beautiful sixteenth-century manuscript, held in Halifax, Canada.

Psallentes has given concerts at a great many venues, large and small, throughout Europe – from the intimate Musica Sacra festival in Bever through the Laus Polyphoniae concert series in Antwerp, the Utrecht Early Music festival, the ‘Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ’ in Amsterdam and the REMA showcase in Valencia to the Vienna Konzerthaus.