Music for Voices and Viols, from Dowland to Purcell
Cambridge Renaissance Voices return to the glorious acoustic of Boxgrove Priory for a special concert with Fretwork, acclaimed by the London Evening Standard as 'the finest viol consort on the planet'. They will be performing a programme of works from the golden age of English consort music, when voices and viols were used interchangeably or together. Viol consorts were central to domestic music-making, in part-songs or madrigals equally suited to string players or singers, and a parallel tradition developed in church music. Voices and viols came together in the verse anthem, whose greatest Jacobean exponents included Thomas Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons whose 400th anniversary we celebrate this year. After the Restoration, the music of Henry Purcell represents in many ways the culmination of this rich tradition. While his anthems straddle the musical styles of the late Renaissance and a more dramatic idiom signalling the early Baroque, Purcell's viol Fantasias look back to an earlier age, bringing to an old instrumental form a dazzling complexity and musical beauty.
'...beautifully controlled... The singers showed understanding and passion in their performance Early Music Review