SKU: ST.EC25
ISBN 9790220216640.
Taverner's votive antiphons represent the largest and most varied contribution to the genre of any early 16th-century composer. They are here presented alphabetically, in two distinct groups of large-works, presumably associated with major feasts, and shorter and simpler pieces. Two fragments, Virgo pura and Prudens virgo and the textless Quemadmodum are also included.
SKU: ST.Y208
ISBN 9790220221101.
This setting of Salve Regina is the first of a cycle entitled Four Votive Antiphons Op. 7, based upon the four chants traditionally sung at Compline through the Church Year, for a vocal consort comprising mezzo-soprano (or countertenor), three tenors (or baritone for third tenor) and baritone.
SKU: ST.Y210
ISBN 9790220221125.
The publication of Regina Celi completes the cycle of four votive antiphons based on the traditional chants of compline, in which the composer Bayan Northcott has imaginatively recreated many of the techniques of medieval and Renaissance music in the context of a contemporary vocal ensemble. Two earlier settings from the sequence, Salve Regina and Alma Redemptoris Mater, have recently been recorded to great acclaim by the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, on Signum SIGCD070. Whether performed by mezzo soprano, three tenors and baritone or full choir (the score may be used for either version) the cumulative effect is of a powerful distillation of the chant, as choral writing of increasing complexity brings the work - and the cycle - to a serene conclusion in F major.
SKU: ST.EC8
ISBN 9790220206443.
The majority of pieces in this volume show a strong melodic and rhythmic independence of voice, close in style to the contemporary French chanson; but there are also examples of pieces in the simpler, homorhythmic idiom of English descant. Votive antiphon and votive mass, or lady mass, were the main forms employed in the important early 15th-century repertoire of devotional and liturgical music for household use.
SKU: ST.EC51
ISBN 9790220222344.
This volume, the second of two devoted to the 16th-century 'Gyffard' partbooks, typifies the collection as a whole in the wide variety of liturgical types and compositional procedures on display. There are Jesus Mass propers built on plainsong cantus firmi, Mass ordinaries based on 'squares', Magnificat settings freely composed or using the canticle tone or its faburden, antiphons in honour of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, the setting of a tract (virtually unprecedented in the history of English polyphony), prayers, and even office responds masquerading as votive antiphons. The composers include Alcock, Bramston, Hoskins, Johnson, Knyght, Mundy, Sheppard, Henry? Stoning, Tallis, Whytbroke, Van Wilder, Wright and Anon. Individual titles from this volume are available as Adobe PDF files...
SKU: ST.Y209
ISBN 9790220221118.
Three Tenors.
SKU: ST.EC54
ISBN 9790220222023.
This is an important addition to the pair of consecutive EECM volumes of John Sheppard's Latin compositions for the Use of Salisbury published in the 1970s. Although he had evidently mastered the forms of Mass and votive antiphon, the composer is at his most characteristic in his settings of the plainsong melodies which form the bedrock of the Sarum liturgy. These account for most of the contents of this volume, together with free-composed settings of Biblical texts and a small corpus of devotional polyphony, most of it fragmentary. In general, textural richness is cultivated in preference to long arcs of melisma, and perfect time is favoured over imperfect, creating a directness of expression that seems to typify mid-Tudor polyphony. The format of this volume follows EECM's house style for post-Reformation composers.
