Concert of English Music: “Masters of Renaissance England”

More HERE – this Wednesday at the Church of the Ascension.

From the program notes of Dennis Keene:

“During the Renaissance, English composers created a huge body of absolutely magnificent choral music – a repertory that held its own against any European country of the period. And, in my opinion, this body of music represents the absolute summit of musical creation in England’s entire history. Furthermore, there is an almost limitless variety among these pieces: profound, soaring Latin motets and masses, brilliant virtuoso pieces, straight-to-the-point communicative settings of English texts, and so forth. I have chosen some of the greatest masterpieces of the two giants of the period, Tallis and Byrd, and a huge variety of works by many other composers.

Our program begins right off with some of the very greatest works of the period: Latin motets of Thomas Tallis. As musician at the Chapel Royal in London from 1543 until his death in 1585, Tallis provided music for four successive British monarchs. During his lifetime the church in England changed back and forth between Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. Like Byrd, Tallis wrote magnificently for whichever church was in power at the time, while remaining himself a life-long Roman Catholic.”

(I would point out that Byrd at least wrote magnificently for the Catholic Religion even when it was out of power.)