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Details
Dorchester Abbey
High Street
Dorchester on Thames
Oxfordshire
OX10 7HH
England
Tickets
Prices: £35, £28, £20
Booking line: 03336663366
Book Tickets
Programme
Robert White – Lamentations II
Robert White – Exaudiat te
Thomas Tallis – Lamentations of Jeremiah 2
Robert Parsons – O bone Jesu
Robert Parsons – Ave Maria
Robert White – Regina caeli
William Byrd – Easter Propers
Performers
Peter Phillips – Conductor
Programme Note
The sound coming from The Tallis Scholars almost surpassed the humanly possible – Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
The journey behind this programme is a familiar one: from darkness into light. Or, to put it in a more Christian way, from penitence into joy. This is an emotional journey, often associated with Lent and Easter, which has inspired some of the greatest sacred music ever written. Our first half is largely devoted to the mood of Lent, nowhere more beautifully captured than in the two English settings of the Lamentations, by White and Tallis, which we sing here. Both composers are masters at alternating the traditional words of lament with the greater reflection provided by the Hebrew letters, which punctuate the main text.
In the second half we join in worship of Jesus and Mary as they fulfill the Easter prophecy: Jesus in Parsons’s magnificent setting of O bone Jesu; Mary in the Ave Maria and Regina caeli settings. The message of these pieces is then summed up in the complete cycle of Byrd’s Propers for Easter Day – five motets which take us through the drama of the Crucifixion. Listen out for the fourth one, where in no more than a minute Byrd describes in music the shaking of the earth when Christ died – Terra tremuit.
