Post Midnight Choral

[jazzy_dave]

Recently BBC Radio 4 has done a series on choral music which was fascinating despite not being a religious person. So for the post midnight music selection some choral music.

William Byrd "Agnus Dei - Mass for five voices"

William Byrd (c. 1540 4 July 1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He cultivated many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.

A special feature of the four-part and five-part Masses is Byrd's treatment of the Agnus Dei, which employ the technique which Byrd had previously applied to the petitionary clauses from the motets of the 1589 and 1591 Cantiones sacrae. The final words dona nobis pacem ('grant us peace'), which are set to chains of anguished suspensions in the Four-Part Mass and expressive block homophony in the five-part setting almost certainly reflect the aspirations of the troubled Catholic community of the 1590s.

Performed : The Tallis Scholars
Dir : Peter Phillips

Thomas Tallis - Spem In Alium

CD: The Tallis Scholars sing Thomas Tallis / Spem In Alium

And just for fun -

Steeleye Span -- Gaudete