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Voices from Tudor Lincolnshire ✦ Motets for for the Virgin MaryA residential singing holiday led by David Allinson
The programme celebrates musical talents connected with Lincolnhire – William Byrd, surely the greatest musician ever to work at Lincoln Cathedral; John Taverner, associated with Boston; and Robert Parsons, key influence upon Byrd, who lived and worked in Lincolnshire and whose death by drowning in the swollen River Trent at Newark gifted Byrd a place in the Chapel Royal.
We will sing two beautiful pieces from later in Byrd’s life: the elegiac 'Retire my soul' and the fervent 'Optimam partam elegit'. From Taverner we have a haunting 'Audivi vocem' and an intriguing 'Ave Maria'.
But the spotlight falls especially on Parsons, today known almost exclusively for his honeyed 'Ave Maria', which was included in my RBS programme for Lincoln in 2021. His music is of such high quality, and so little known, that it will be a pleasure to explore his searingly dramatic Latin pieces for Holy Week, and his sweet, mellow canticles for the Church of England.
The other half of the programme is a bouquet of motets for the Virgin Mary. The Feast of the Assumption falls on 15 August, and that is that perfect premise for us to explore hymns of praise and settings of the Song of Songs by superb composers including Isaac, Guerrero and Victoria.
The course is based on the modern campus of Lincoln University. Enjoy several days of light and shade in the lee of Lincoln Cathedral, the building John Ruskin called ‘the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles’.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
City of Lincoln, Highbridge, 207 High Street, Lincoln, LN5 7AU, United Kingdom,Lincoln, Lincolnshire
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