Oxford Pro Musica Singers: Masters of the Renaissance

Oxford Pro Musica Singers Mark Jordan (conductor)

The resonant surrounds of Exeter College Chapel, Oxford will be the ideal setting for Oxford Pro Musica Singers’ feast of sacred and secular music from the English Renaissance. Primarily celebrating two of its great masters who died 400 years ago this year, William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes, the programme will also feature music by contemporaries such as Tallis and Gibbons.

William Byrd is doubtless the more familiar of our two main stars, and we include a number of favourites, from the intense and reverent ‘Ave verum corpus’ to the exuberant Easter motet ‘Haec dies’. However we also hope to introduce you to some lesser-known gems, such as his deeply felt lament on the death of Thomas Tallis and the sprightly madrigal ‘Though Amaryllis dance’, closing with that majestic paean of praise, ‘Laudibus in sanctis’.

Thomas Weelkes, though, will have his moment: we open the concert with his wonderfully declamatory 'Hosanna to the son of David' and hope to demonstrate his considerable range and skill, from his poignant and little-known setting of ‘When David heard’ to the energetic word-painting of ‘As Vesta was’.

Complemented by such jewels as Tallis’s ‘O Nata Lux’ and Gibbons’s ‘Hosanna to the son of David’, the concert will surely be a fitting tribute to two of England’s great composers.

The programme includes : 

Hosanna to the son of David - Thomas Weelkes

Iustorum animae - William Byrd

Haec Dies quam fecit Dominus - William Byrd

Emendemus in melius - William Byrd

Laudibus in sanctis - William Byrd

Ave verum corpus - William Byrd

O Lord Arise - Thomas Weelkes

Hosanna to the son of David - Orlando Gibbons

O nata lux de lumine- Thomas Tallis

Loquebantur variis linguis - Thomas Tallis

When David heard - Thomas Weelkes

As Vesta was - Thomas Weelkes

Hark all ye lovely saints above - Thomas Weelkes

Though Amaryllis dance in green - William Byrd

This sweet and merry month of May - William Byrd