Our programmes
Although only a handful of works associated with Christmas survives from early Tudor England, this significant celebration inspired some of the most intricate and extravagant polyphony of the period. Our programme includes works by John Taverner, Walter Lambe, Thomas Packe, Nicholas Ludford and Robert Fayrfax, favoured composer of both Henry VII and Henry VIII. Read more
Secret Knowledge of the Stars
Music from the reign of Henry VII
The epitaph of John Dunstaple (c.1390-1453), renowned English composer, mathematician, and astronomer, states that he had ‘secret knowledge of the stars’. Composers of late-medieval England understood that the celestial movements of the universe emitted inaudible divine music which sounded with the same harmonic proportions as the audible music of human beings. Read more
Lily of Eternal Praise
Marian devotions in late-medieval England
This programme paints a colourful portrait of the extravagant and expressive musical devotions to the Virgin Mary prevalent in late-medieval England. Mary was the most celebrated divine figure after Christ during this period, and in England it was common in countless institutions for the choir to sing elaborate, large-scale polyphonic works called votive antiphons in dedication to the Virgin at the end of the day. Read more
More Splendid Than the Sun
Sacred music by Taverner & Ludford for five & six voices
More Splendid Than the Sun highlights the joys and miracles of the Virgin Mary’s life as expressed in sacred polyphony from early sixteenth-century England. The luminous six-voice Mass Videte miraculum by Westminster-based Nicholas Ludford (c.1485-1557) provides the centrepiece of the programme, and its movements are interspersed with several plainsong melodies for the Mass’s feast day, Candlemas. Read more