The Tudor Fair Blog
Old Music Wednesday: Music from the Eton Choirbook
The Choir of Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford, have just released a new album from their exploration of the Eton Choirbook. One of the most famous liturgical manuscripts in England, the Eton Choirbook is a manuscript dating from the very early 16th century. It is one of the best examples of early…
Old Music Tuesday: The Baldwin Partbooks
John Baldwin was a singer in St George’s Chapel Windsor in the late 16th century. He also sang in the Chapel Royal. A man of many talents, Baldwin was also a composer, and copied manuscripts. He is the source of many of the manuscripts we have of music from this…
Musical Expression and Aliveness through the centuries: ORA and Many are the Wonders
On a wintery evening in early February last year I braved the cold rain to make a pilgrimage to the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. No, it wasn’t to pay homage to the burial place of Lady Jane Grey or Anne Boleyn, though that…
Listening Projects (or infusing more Beethoven into my life)
I spend a lot of time bemoaning the amount of music there is in the world which I will never hear. There just isn’t enough time in the day. Same with books. If I read all 1500 books on my Kindle this year, during the time I spent reading another…
Christina de Pizan: Early Feminist, Poet, and all around Badass
Have you ever noticed that once you hear about someone for the first time, they often come back to haunt you? Christina de Pizan is like that for me. I had never really registered her before I interviewed Alison Weir this past February when she came up. Nowadays everywhere I look…
Old Music Tuesday: Henry’s Musical Court & The Western Wynde Mass
Yep, you read that right. The musical court of Henry VIII. While many of us think of the monarch with six wives as fat and pretty darn corpulent, he wasn’t always this way. In fact, when he was young, he was quite the hottie, impressing women with his jousting feats,…
Music from the world of the Queen of Scots
We all know that early music, particularly English liturgical music, is my big passion, right? I geek out on the music created out of the Book of Common Prayer, and I can easily sit for hours comparing Tallis through the decades. But one area I don’t know that much about,…
Haec Dies! Music for rebirth and renewal.
Every once in a while there’s a piece of music that paints such a beautiful picture of happiness, rebirth, renewal, and the essence of Easter, that you just have to get up and dance a jig. That’s what Byrd’s Haec Dies does for me. Latin for This is the Day…
Why you should become intimate with Dido & Aeneas
Between 1684 and 1688 English music, opera, and music history was changed when Purcell wrote Dido & Aeneas, one of England’s earliest operas written by the Grandaddy of English Baroque. Now, 350 years later, it is still alive and well as a new recording by the Armonico Consort demonstrates, and…
Music for Impressing a King: Taverner’s Missa Corona Spinea, Wolsey, and Henry VIII
In March 1527 Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon visited Cardinal Wolsey’s new foundation – Cardinal’s College – in Oxford. John Taverner, one of the most famous composers of his time, was commissioned to write an appropriately stunning piece of choral music that would wow the King and…
Five Great Albums to Start an Early English Music Journey
It’s been just over 20 years since I first became hooked on early English choral music through singing Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus in my high school chamber choir. I talk about that piece a lot – it sums up for me this struggle of humanity; how much do you conform vs…
Early Music Saturday: Madrigals of Madness from the Calmus Ensemble
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again – I find the best music via the Millennium of Music show, which is on both Sirius and NPR. I have a membership and can listen to old episodes (it’s the best $2.99/month I spend) and I was perusing episodes…
-
Previous
- Page 1 of 5
- Next