Sherborne Abbey, 20 May 2017

Cambridge Renaissance Voices join forces with the viol consort Concordia in the glorious setting of Sherborne Abbey, to explore a rich repertoire of English music from the 17th century.

Tickets available online or call 01935 815341.

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This was the golden age of consort music, where voices and viols were used interchangeably or together. Viol consorts were central to domestic music-making, in part- songs or madrigals equally suited to string players or singers.

A parallel tradition developed in relation to church music; for over a hundred years, English composers explored the fascination of vocally inspired instrumental polyphony by writing ‘In nomines’ for viol consort, weaving elaborate instrumental lines around a musical theme taken from the Tudor composer John Taverner’s mass on the plainchant ‘Gloria Tibi Trinitas’.

Voices and viols came together in the verse anthem, whose greatest Jacobean exponents included Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tomkins. The music of Henry Purcell represents in many ways the culmination of this rich tradition. While his anthems straddle the musical styles of the late Renaissance and a more dramatic idiom signalling the early Baroque, Purcell’s viol Fantasias look back to an earlier age, bringing to an old instrumental form a dazzling complexity and musical beauty.

Long Melford concert | 20 Nov 2016

Booking is now open for our return visit to the immense and beautiful Suffolk church of Holy Trinity, which takes place at 7:30pm on Sunday 20th November. Click here for the Box Office.

The programme is a tour of joyful music of sixteenth century Europe, celebrating Mary as Queen of Heaven, with settings of the texts "Regina coeli laetare', 'Ave Regina coelorum' and 'Benedicta es coelorum regina'. Along with motets by Josquin, Guerrero, Lobo and Gabrieli, we will perform an extraordinary and unjustly forgotten mass by the Flemish composer Philippe de Monte, who befriended William Byrd on a visit to England and was one of the most influential musicians of his generation. The music of the mass is based on a then famous motet by Josquin, which will also be performed, as well as the plainchant for each of the texts. There is a buoyancy and vigour about all of this music, and also great contrapuntal invention.

Forthcoming concerts

We are delighted to be returning to Holy Trinity, Long Melford, on Sunday 20th November, 2016. This concert will feature the exciting six-part 'Benedicta Es' mass by Phillipe de Monte (1521-1603),

Booking will be open in the autumn.

Looking further ahead to 2017, the choir is planning to perform in the magnificent Abbey at Sherborne. Further details will be available soon.

Boxgrove concert 7 May 2016

Life, Death and Redemption in Tudor England 
Sheppard’s Media Vita and motets by Tallis, Byrd, Mundy and Parsons
Directed by Rupert Preston Bell
Saturday 7th May 2016, 7.30pm at Boxgrove Priory

Ticket information / Box office

Much of the great devotional music of the English Renaissance illustrates the paradox that the bleakest liturgical texts often inspired the most glorious compositions of the period. John Sheppard’s Media Vita weaves some of the most serenely beautiful lines of English polyphony out of the despairing words later adopted for the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer: ‘In the midst of life we are in death’.

Sheppard’s masterpiece forms the centre of a programme of Tudor music ideally suited to the atmospheric acoustic of Boxgrove Priory. This repertoire is the musical heartland of Cambridge Renaissance Voices, hailed by Early Music Review for performances that are ‘assured and expressive… achingly beautiful’, combining ‘understanding and passion’ in their recreation of the golden age of sacred music.

Boxgrove Priory is an exquisite and ancient building, three miles from Chichester, postcode PO18 0ED, website www.boxgrovepriory.co.uk

Concert in Belsize Park

The choir repeats most of the "Requiem for a Renaissance King" programme in London on Saturday 14 November in the Belsize Festival.

St Peter's church, Belsize Park, NW3 4HJ
14 November, 7:30pm
Music by Eustache du Caurroy, Victoria, Monteverdi and Lobo, along with motets by English composers Taverner, Tallis and Byrd.

Known subsequently as "Henri le Bon" and "le roi de la paix" because of his policy of religious toleration and his importance as the founder of the Bourbon dynasty, Henri IV was assassinated by an extremist on the streets of Paris in 1610. For him and all victims of violence, requiescant in pace.

Concert 8 November 2015: the funeral of Henri IV

Cambridge Renaissance Voices returns to Holy Trinity, Long Melford, on 8th November 2015, for a concert of continental Renaissance masterpieces, based around the famous funeral mass of the French royal family.

Click here to book tickets from the Theatre Royal Box Office.

Henri IV of France is probably best remembered in history text books for his religious toleration in signing the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which granted rights to the Calvinist Huguenots and ended the French Wars of Religion. But France’s fondness for him as “Henri le Bon” came about more as a result of his death by assassination and the political wish of his successors to celebrate him as founder of the Bourbon royal dynasty.

It may therefore have been to emphasise the continuity of the Bourbon succession that the music performed at Henri’s funeral was subsequently sung again at the next royal funeral, and then again for over 150 years at each such occasion right up until the French Revolution. Ironically, the music’s composer, Eustache du Caurroy, had died the year before Henri and was never to have an inkling of his own immortalisation in the process.

Henri IV lying in state in the Louvre Palace

Du Caurroy rose to prominence at court in 1569 and became Composer at the Royal Chapel in his last years. His Requiem is written in the formal, high style of Renaissance polyphony, demonstrating an elegance and inventiveness in counterpoint, of which Du Caurroy was an acknowledged master. There are some characteristics of the emerging Baroque style, particularly in the 'Libera Me', but the solemnity appropriate to the subject matter recalls earlier, great Requiems of the Renaissance by composers like Victoria, Guerrero and Morales.

The choir is accompanied by Il Musici della Contessa, a group of period instrumentalists (cornetts, sackbuts and curtal). This will be the choir's third concert at Holy Trinity, one of the great Suffolk wool churches of the fifteenth century, which provides a superb, atmospheric setting for these great works of sacred music.

Assured and expressive

From Early Music Review, June 2015

"The concert of Sacred Music of the Italian Baroque given by Cambridge Renaissance Voices attracted a large audience to St Cross Church in Winchester, a fine Norman building with an excellent acoustic for choral singing in the beautiful setting of the Hospital of St Cross...

"... Soprano soloist Kate Semmens' voice filled the church and her delivery of ornaments and virtuoso passages in [Monteverdi's] Laudate Dominum was impressive. Kate was joined by soprano Caroline Preston Bell from the choir for Pulchra Es from the 1610 Vespers. Their voices blended well, and with the continuo provided by Lynda Sayce (theorbo) alone, the three gave a memorable performance of this now well known duet...

"...The audience was treated to an assured and expressive performance of Lotti's Crucifixus a 8. The eight successive entries at the start achieved a controlled crescendo and the repeated quavers on crucifixus etiam pro nobis continued to build the tension towards the climax on passus et sepultus est and the suspensions descending to the peaceful concluding phrase. The singers showed understanding and passion in their performance of this much loved work, producing their best singing of the evening.

"Giacomo Carissimi's Jephte is a lovely miniature oratorio, eminently suitable for a chamber choir and continuo... Kate Semmens (Filia) gave an accomplished performance of her contrasting arias, the first sung when rejoicing in being the first to greet her father (Jephte) on his triumphant return from battle and the second heart-rending aria when bewailing her virginity and impending fate. The two sopranos providing the offstage echo of Filia's aria did this very well. Other solos were ably sung by members of the choir. Jephte in particular was expressive and confident in conveying the sadness of his tragic dilemma. The main chorus was assured and agile both in the battle scene and when rejoicing in victory. The final chorus of this oratorio must surely be amongst the most achingly beautiful music in the choral repertoire. Listening, in the fading light of St Cross Church, to the expressively sing descending phrases and suspensions conveying the lamenting of the children of Israel for Jepthe's daughter, was a very moving experience for the appreciative audience."