Alto presents a remastered collection of English sacred choral music performed by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge under Timothy Brown.
The first half of the programme gathers Tudor and early Baroque settings of grief and lament, including Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, Byrd’s Civitas sancti tui, and contrasting settings of “When David Heard” by both Weelkes and Tomkins, alongside two verse anthems by Purcell.
The second half moves into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with anthems by Parry, Walton, Howells, Finzi, Ireland, and Stanford, tracing the English cathedral tradition from its Tudor roots into the modern era.
Together the album demonstrates the development of English composers, across some four hundred years, through shared biblical texts and grief-laden themes, and how they came to produce some of the choral repertoire’s most affecting music.
