Dear colleagues,
My choir from Cambridge, UK (www.newcambridgesingers.org.uk/), is commissioning a piece from Giles Swayne for choir and viol consort (5-piece), and we would be really interested to hear from any other choirs who would like to get involved, either with a performance date or on a joint commission basis.
The work, which we shall be performing alongside Lassus Missa Bell’ Amfitrit’ Altera, the Mass Propers for Ascensiontide from Byrd’s Gradualia, and Tallis’s Spem in Alium (with the viols as well as cornetts and sackbuts), is a setting of an amazing text from Joyce’s Ulysses, which though not biblical would certainly work liturgically:
Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death
And the dust that gripeth on every man born of woman;
For as he came naked forth from his mother’s womb,
So naked shall he wend him at the last,
For to go as he came.
For any who don’t know Swayne’s music, he’s a tremendous composer, really fine and imaginative, and he writes brilliantly for voices. We’ll be performing it with Newe Vialles (which was the name of Henry VIII’s consort in the 1540s) – I’m sure they would travel if you don’t have a consort nearby….
Please do contact me if you’d be interested to be involved in this amazing project!
Graham Walker
—
Director of Music, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Director, St John’s Voices, St John’s College, Cambridge
Musical Director, New Cambridge Singers
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