Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble Stile Antico returns with its second recording for harmonia mundi. Heavenly Harmonies juxtaposes the highly expressive Latin motets of William Byrd (c. 1540-1632) with the austere, homophonic psalm tunes of Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) in a performance notable for the British group's "staggeringly beautiful singing" (The Sunday Times) and recorded in a fittingly majestic acoustic. At the heart of the religious disputes which ravaged 16th-century England, the towering figures of the Catholic Tallis and Protestant Byrd embody two opposing tendencies. What is sometimes overlooked is how much the motets from Byrd's Cantiones sacrae I and II (1589 and 1591) owe to the concise and expressive language pioneered by Tallis a generation earlier, when he also contributed the nine psalm tunes to a new psalter by Archbishop Matthew Parker (1567) - printed but regrettably never offered for sale. The program also includes Byrd's Mass Propers for Pentecost from his Gradualia of 1607. |
