On July 5, 1672, antiquarian and diarist Anthony à Wood noted in his diary, "Encaenia: excellent musick." The Encaenia was what seventeenth century Oxford called its annual graduation ceremony, which was held in a theater, and the music was Descende caelo cincta sororibus, or The Oxford Ode, written by England's then-reigning monarch among ...
The Six Favourite Concertos of Thomas Arne are actually the only concertos that were left to us, likely the only concertos he wrote. The publisher added "Favourite" when printing them several years after Arne's death. It is believed that Arne wrote at least some of them for his son, Michael, a skilled keyboardist, but there is little flashiness in ...
Where did the big, imposing, public quality of Handel's English choral music come from? Listening to the music of John Blow (1649-1708) uncovers part of the answer. Blow, organist at the Chapel Royal and later the impressively titled "Composer of the Chapel Royal," was the preeminent church composer of the English restoration. His anthems, 14 of ...
When you make the list of composers who died tragically young, don't forget Thomas Linley the Younger of England, the victim of a boating accident when he was just 22. Even the often-caustic Mozart lamented what was lost. This disc, recorded in 1994 for Hyperion and reissued in its budget Helios line, makes a powerful case for Linley's talent. His ...
The writer of the booklet notes for this CD contends that Peter Philips is less well known than other English composers of the late Renaissance because he lived and worked mostly in what is now Belgium -- he has been slighted because of the Anglocentric nature of English musical scholarship, the reasoning goes, while he is not exactly a ...
The masterpieces of the High Baroque did not arise in isolation but were almost all steps in long traditions -- and are better understood as such. Recordings of Buxtehude's music have shed a good deal of light on Bach, for instance, and the wider dissemination of the North Italian concerto tradition has confirmed the role of Vivaldi as a daring ...
The chief draw on this reissue album of English Classical-era clarinet concertos is the delightful work of clarinetist Colin Lawson, playing a copy of a period English instrument. Like Extreme Makeover, he makes the most of modest charms. The music here resembles in mood the sunny, light compositions of London's preeminent composer of the ...
With all of the attention Heinrich von Biber had in terms of new recordings, it is a pity that none of it has rubbed off onto Biber's closest, and utterly worthy, contemporary Georg Muffat. Partly it is a problem of output; compared to Biber's 170-plus surviving compositions, which seems to grow by a piece or two every year as new manuscripts are ...
As the Interregnum headed by the Cromwells ended around 1660, Matthew Locke discovered that as one-time music master to the household of Charles II during the latter's years of exile in France, the restoration of the King also meant the installation of Locke as royal music master. This came as a huge boost in status for Locke, who was struggling ...
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