Posts tagged as "anthony-rooley"

A Purcell Songbook

April 29, 2016

The world’s most popular period-instrument soprano, Kirkby’s pure, crystalline sound defined how vocal music of the baroque and earlier eras should sound for a whole generation or more. A pioneer of the Early Music movement, Emma Kirkby presents an intimate concert of both familiar and rare Purcell songs. Lindsay Kemp writes: ‘Even today, nearly half […]

An Elizabethan Songbook

April 29, 2016

It was common from medieval times to think of the Arts as female; in most European languages the words for them are feminine, and in pictures too they were represented as heavenly ladies, each carrying some appropriate object, and often attended by the male figures of her most famous earthly servants. The frontispiece chosen by […]

The Best of Purcell

April 28, 2016

A beautiful collection of Purcell favourites, both from recent times with artists of the calibre of Emma Kirkby and Christopher Hogwood, to such Purcell champions of the mid-20th century as Benjamin Britten, whose rousing arrangement and performance of the ‘Chaconne in G minor’ is here included.

Holborne: Pavans and Galliards (1599)

April 22, 2016

A timely revival of marvellous music by a late 16th-century English composer too often neglected, this collection of eighteen dances for wind and string ensembles comes from from a rich collection of instrumental pieces published in 1599. The reissue – making its first international appearance on CD – contains the fascinating original L’Oiseau-Lyre booklet notes […]

Ward: First Set of English Madrigals; Four Fantasias for Viols

April 22, 2016

With a career as Attorney in the Exchequer in the service of Sir Henry Fanshawe, John Ward’s profession was only incidentally (or at least not primarily) that of a musician. From all accounts Fanshawe himself had musical enthusiasms and his household apparently included ‘many gentlemen that were perfectly well qualified both in that [music] and […]

Maynard: The XII Wonders of the World (1611); Character Songs

April 22, 2016

To mark the reissue of this important Consort of Musicke recording, Anthony Rooley writes: ‘Of all the English Lute-Song Books of the Elizabethan/Jacobean Era none has been more misunderstood, nor wilfully maligned as John Maynard’s unique creation. Highly individual, full of rare humour, amazing invention – and at times quite exquisite poignancy – it deserves […]

The Cozens Lute Book

April 20, 2016

Antony Rooley writes: ‘Since 1963 I had been spending many hours in the British Library studying the sixteenth-century English lute manuscripts … what a unique collection! The “Jane Pickering Lute Book”, “The John Sturt Lute Book”, “The Mynshall Lute Book” – all collections of one individual’s personal choice of repertoire, each with unique information on […]

Pastoral Dialogues

April 20, 2016

Anthony Rooley writes: ‘In the mid-1970s this humble lute-player had theatrical pretensions! I realised quite early on in my performing career that audiences generally needed more help to “get inside” the beautiful obscure music I was discovering and if their appetite was to be fostered, a new dimension in the manner of presentation had to […]

Le Chansonnier Cordiforme

April 20, 2016

This set of three CDs contains the complete ‘Chansonnier Cordiforme’, perhaps the most beautiful of all surviving music manuscripts whose first owner was Jean de Montchenu (d. 1497). It was compiled during the 1470s and contains 43 songs from the preceding 30 years by Dufay, Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and other composers of the time. This […]

Danyel: Lute Songs (1606)

April 20, 2016

Anthony Rooley writes: ‘Even in 1926 when Peter Warlock published his brief essay on the English Lute Songs, John Danyel was singled out as being perhaps the finest lute-song composer (John Dowland not excepted) by perceptive Warlock. Nobody believed him then and not much has changed now – but I agree with Warlock. John Danyel […]

Coprario: Songs of Mourning, Consort Music

April 20, 2016

John Coprario is not yet a household name (unless the house be one with devoted viol consort aficionados!) but his name should resound in any dwelling where people with a love of English music dwell – for he is firmly of the line of inspiration that leads directly to Henry Purcell two generations later (Coprario […]

Coprario: Funeral Teares, Consort Music

April 20, 2016

King James was paranoid, neurotic, suspicious and an immensely jealous man. Anyone at Court who had individuality, a certain ‘swagger’ and self-assuredness was a sure target of his unsure outlook. Such a one was the Earl of Devonshire, Charles Blount along with his beautiful Penelope – a very striking pair but who became the brunt […]