This collection of English verse anthems and viol fantasias -- there are no examples of the a cappella, highly polyphonic full anthem -- comes from Montreal's vibrant early music scene and it offers a fresh version of these often-recorded classics of English choral music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The verse anthem, written in English, was a characteristic Anglican genre, alternating between choral and solo passages and deploying the text across plain but often rather fervent lines of music. It is ...
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This collection of English verse anthems and viol fantasias -- there are no examples of the a cappella, highly polyphonic full anthem -- comes from Montreal's vibrant early music scene and it offers a fresh version of these often-recorded classics of English choral music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The verse anthem, written in English, was a characteristic Anglican genre, alternating between choral and solo passages and deploying the text across plain but often rather fervent lines of music. It is accompanied here, as was normal, by viols; an organ can also be used. Done right, a work like John Ward's Prayer is an endless chain (track 2) or any of the three thorny but exultant anthems by Orlando Gibbons should have the combination of piety and rich beauty that would be characteristic of Bach's music a century or more later. Conductor Christopher Jackson, leading the 13-voice, mixed-gender les Voix Humaines and the fabulous viols of le Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal,...
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