Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.)
This recording aims to provide Robert Parsons, who died tragically in his forties, with a memorial service he never received and aid his return to a place alongside the greatest English Renaissance composers. · Movements from the First Great Service, scored for two antiphonal choirs, provide the core of this ‘remembrance service’ for Robert Parsons. In scale and polyphonic grandeur the work maintains the old Catholic tradition, while making use of the new Protestant liturgy with its revolutionary setting of the 1549 English texts. Interspersed between movements of the First Great Service are a number of pieces taken from the Responds for the Dead, set to Latin texts. The Magnificat, which opens this recording, is the largest-scale single work that Parsons wrote.
Robert Parsons: Magnificat
Magnificat
Robert Parsons: First Great Service
Venite
Te Deum
Robert Parsons: Responds for the Dead
Responds for the Dead: Peccantem me, quotidie
First Great Service
First Great Service: Benedictus
Responds for the Dead
Responds for the Dead: Libera me, Domine
First Great Service
First Great Service: Creed
Responds for the Dead
Responds for the Dead: Credo quod redemptor
First Great Service
Magnificat
Nunc dimittis
Robert Parsons: Ave Maria
Ave Maria
April 2008
“A useful recital gives a broader view of the composer of the famous Ave Maria.”
“The music’s lines become majestically entangled; cadences process without any resolution; solemn musings suddenly switch to a dance or brawl: here is the 17th century’s avant-garde.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.