For music-lovers who grew up between the 1950s and the 1970s, Alfred Deller (1912–1979) was the embodiment of the countertenor voice, just as Segovia was the guitar and Casals was the cello. Many who heard his earliest LPs will have applauded the words that Sir Michael Tippett uttered on first hearing Deller live, as early […]

Another joyous anthology of verse and music from the expert, London-based ensembles of voices and viols who have already contributed several valuable reissues to ‘The Tudors’ series on Eloquence. ‘Lo, Country Sports’ takes its title from the madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, complemented by the pastoral poetry of Thomas Nashe and Edmund Bolton, among others. It […]

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 […]

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 […]

‘Wales is rich in folk songs and the art of singing these songs is very much alive today,’ writes Osian Ellis in the original note (reprinted in the CD booklet) accompanying this L’Oiseau-Lyre LP. Renowned for his harpistry and to many through his recordings of music by Benjamin Britten (with whom he worked closely), this […]