The Windsor Consort

OTHER PROGRAMS

Farewell All Joys

A journey through the pains of love and despair

Farewell all joys is an all a-cappella programme devoted to the English madrigal of the beginning of the 17th century, exploring some of the most dark and tormented pieces of the English tradition. It will be a journey through different feelings of sadness and grief, arising from the pains of love and despair and that ultimately motivate the desire of death.

Music by Morley, Wilbye, Gibbons, Tomkins and Dowland

Ah Dolente

The love affair of Amarilli and Mirtillo

A selection of Italian madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries Luca Marenzio and the less known Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi portraying the tormented love affair of Amarilli and Mirtillo, the famous love story from “Il Pastor Fido” by Giovanni Battista Guarini, one of the most celebrated plays in the 15th century that inspired so many composers.

Music by Monteverdi, Marenzio and Gastoldi (optional contemporary piece by Knight)

Cançoes Portuguesas

Traditional meets Polyphony

The Windsor Consort and Kamerkoor JIP come together with a unique Portuguese program in which traditional folk sounds and contrast-rich new compositions meet. The crystal-clear sounds of The Windsor Consort, combined with the warmth of Kamerkoor JIP, guarantee an impressive evening.

Music by various composers including F. Lopes Graça, Diogo Dias Melgas, E. Lopes Morago, and Eurico Carrapatoso

Cantiones Sacrae

London 1575

16th Century England was a confusing time to be a church musician. Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, both well known Catholics, became so close to Queen Elizabeth that they were able to maintain powerful positions in church music at the time. Such was the esteem that Elizabeth held the two musicians that, in 1575, she granted them a joint patent for printing music. This gave them the monopoly over polyphonic sheet music in England. The first collection of music published under the patent was Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur. Dedicated to Elizabeth, it consisted of 34 motets in Latin (17 from each composer; one for each year of the Queen’s reign). It is from this publication that most of our programme is taken, a selection of some of the finest motets within it.

Music by Tallis and Byrd