Byrd: Civitas Sancti Tui

An ideal release for the penitential church season of Lent, with music for Lent, Passiontide and Holy Week, sung by the highly-accomplished Choir of Winchester College.

A varied selection of music ranging from the 16th to 20th centuries, framed by Tippett’s heart-rending settings of five spirituals.

Some of the greatest music ever written for the this solemn period of preparation for Easter, including Lotti’s Crucifixus, Tippett’s Five Spirituals, and works by Byrd, Purcell, Duruflé and John Ireland.

This recording brings together music composed in a variety of contrasting yet complemetary forms, from Gregorian chant to more elaborate, polyphonic music, set to words that explore the rawest human emotions, death, sin and repentance. The death of a loved one is a particularly distressing experience, and over the centuries composers have chanelled their grief into their most moving and emotional works. In the 1850s Brahms composed the German Requiem after he lost his mother, and Fauré’s Requiem was also composed after his mother died. Britten produced the imposingly bleak and Mahlerian Sinfonia da Requiem after the death of his parents.

In this recording, the grief of Mary, the mother of Christ, is portrayed in Palestrina’s masterful setting of the Stabat Mater, composed for Pope Gregory XIV. Another moving portrayal of grief is Weelkes’s intimate depiction of the pain of David upon learning of his son Absalom’s death, When David heard. Allegri’s Miserere concerns the belief in a higher power and the submission to it. Set to Psalm 51, the work was recognised by its composer and the Vatican as being of such beauty that its publishing was forbidden. No score was to leave the Papal Chapel. The child Mozart was famously shown the score, and he copied it from memory in the 1770s and in effect released this remarkable work to the wider world.

Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, the King's Singers and Concordia illuminate the dangers of hearing Mass in secret, of conspiracy and downfall and of Protestant relief and great joy. Structured around Byrd's perfect 4-part Mass, the CD contains motets by Catholic composers, Protestant anthems celebrating the downfall of the plot and a commission from the British composer, Francis Pott, Master Tresham: His Ducke. A script, drawing on historic texts, reproduced in the CD booklet, uses the dramatised persona of Byrd to recreate the atmosphere of change and hope in the Jacobean court.

5 CD + CD ROM of booklet notes and sung texts

CD 1: Lamentation

CD 2: Henry Purcell

CD 3: Evensong & Vespers at King's - Vespers for the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Evenson for Advent

CD 4: Sacred Choral Favourites

CD 5: Works by Rutter, Bernstein & Poulenc