The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – Masters of Imitation (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:35 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CORO
Imitation is the ultimate compliment. To take inspiration from someone else’s work, to borrow and rework it to form another piece…what could be more flattering? This technique, known as ‘parody’, was hugely popular in late 16th-century Europe and Orlande de Lassus was one of its most famous advocates. The Sixteen’s programme showcases the master of parody at work and also features a new commission from the extraordinarily inventive composer Bob Chilcott parodying one of Lassus’ finest secular madrigals.
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The Sixteen & Harry Christophers – Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Volume III (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:03 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CORO
Purcell’s genius abounds throughout the latest volume of The Sixteen’s celebrated exploration of his music for monarchy. Rarely recorded in recent years, Harry Christophers and his award-winning ensemble breathe fresh life into these exquisite works, including two Welcome Songs and one of Purcell’s most famous verse anthems, Rejoice in the Lord alway.
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The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – The Deer’s Cry (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:50 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Whilst coming from very different eras, William Byrd and Arvo Pärt are both considered masters of sacred music despite having faced considerable persecution for their work. This programme presents six of William Byrd’s works from the Cantiones Sacrae including the monumental Tribue, Domine, and the mighty eight-voice motet Ad Dominum cum tribularer. The three works by Arvo Pärt speak in his unmistakable voice, with its unique blend of ancient and modern, and include his mesmerising Nunc dimittis which is crafted in his bell-like ‘tinitinnabuli’ style.
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The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – Edmund Rubbra: Sacred Choral Works (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:08 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
The distinctive style of Edmund Rubbra’s music is unmistakable – his love of counterpoint, his sense of tonality, and his clever working of melody make him stand out from many of his contemporaries. His writing, whilst harmonically challenging and vocally taxing, is also intensely personal and highly charged with emotion – at times mystical, at others seriously dramatic.
Though he is best-known for his orchestral works, choral music was a constant throughout his career, and a genre of particular importance to a composer of strong spiritual conviction.
In this beautiful new recording The Sixteen explores some of his little-known choral music including the extraordinary Tenebrae Nocturns and the Missa Cantuariensis with its fabulous double-choir writing.
This album also features the first recording of the Responses from the Missa Cantuariensis.
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The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – Song of the Nativity (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:55 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
The Sixteen contrasts the dramatic intensity of music by some of today’s most admired composers with such traditional and modern carols as Boris Ord’s Adam lay ybounden and Henry Walford Davies’ version of O little town of Bethlehem. Much-loved modern classics including John Rutter’s There is a flower, Morten Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium and James MacMillan’s O radiant dawn also appear on this beautiful album and there are many others which, in the course of time, will also become classics; every one of them by their unashamed simplicity, captures the joy and sincerity of this most wonderful of seasons. This album provides a perfect peaceful and uplifting antidote to the hectic pre-Christmas rush.
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The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – Poetry in Music (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:49 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Does music add substance to words or is music inspired by them? Songs of departure and farewell are deeply rooted in the great tradition of British choral music, nourished by ancient myths of testing journeys, wayside transformations and homecomings. The transcendent nature of music and the power of poetry to challenge and alter perceptions of reality – harnessed by English composers over many centuries – flow through a programme that invites contemplation of life and death, of love and loss, creation and eternity. In a journey covering six centuries of musical history, The Sixteen performs a cappella anthems with powerful texts by writers as varied as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Fry and W.H. Auden.
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The Sixteen – Purcell: Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:51 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Charles II’s formal Restoration in 1660 marked both an end and a beginning: the end of England’s republican experiment and the beginning of a long process of monarchical reconstruction; and with a politically accident-prone king on the throne, Charles’s public relations machine could never rest. Purcell joined its small team of composer operatives just as the wave of Stuart propaganda swelled massively, and he surfed the wave with breathtaking panache, from his first court ode – the simple but rousing Welcome, Vicegerent of the mighty King – to the ambitious Fly, bold rebellion involving verse settings in up to seven parts and a six-part chorus.
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The Sixteen & Harry Christophers – Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Volume II (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:25 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
King Charles II liked to project a strong, stable, divinely legitimated image. Whilst that image had no basis in reality, the scale of his deception and financial skulduggery did not emerge until 19th-century historians discovered secret treaty documents between Charles and King Louis XIV of France. Purcell had no idea of course, and so all of the music on this album celebrates the political triumphs that he and his colleagues thought they had witnessed. It includes the quite brilliant Welcome Songs ‘Welcome to all the pleasures’ (with its superb six-part fanfares to St Cecilia in the final chorus) and ‘From hardy climes’.
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The Sixteen, Eamonn Dougan – Marcin Mielczewski (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:30 minutes | 1023 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
The fifth volume in this highly acclaimed series, conducted by The Sixteen’s Associate Conductor, Eamonn Dougan, celebrates the music of Polish composer Marcin Mielczewski. Together with Bartłomiej Pękiel, Mielczewski was amongst the most notable of 17th-century Polish composers and was recognised as a leader among his contemporaries. Influenced by the many Italian composers who graced the Polish courts in the 1600s, Mielczewski was a prolific composer. The cross-section of works recorded here shows an exceptionally accomplished musician at work, one whose music deserves a wider audience and who can confidently stand alongside the maestri who came before him and from whom he learnt his craft.
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The Sixteen – Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Volume IV (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:35 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Despite only living until the age of 36, Purcell is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable musical geniuses of all time. The Sixteen continues its exploration of his music written for royalty, illuminating two more of Purcell’s Welcome Songs – Swifter, Isis, swifter flow and The summer’s absence unconcerned we bear. In his music for Nathaniel Lee’s tragedy Theodosius we witness the young Purcell displaying his playhouse wares in strokes of astonishing versatility some ten years before he made a serious impact as a master of music for the stage.
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The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – Royal Welcome Songs for King James II (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:00 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Despite being written for the celebration of royal occasions, Purcells Royal Welcome Songs were penned during a time of immense disillusionment with the monarchy. Filled with humour as well as an ironic detachment from the politics of the time, Ye tuneful muses and Sound the trumpet fizz with the dramatic energy which characterised his later operas and mark a crucial turning point in Purcells career. This programme showcases the variety and diversity of Purcells writing, opening with the Chacony in G minor, which is among the great glories of music for strings, and including When on my sick bed I languish – an amazingly impassioned piece in which he bares his soul…quintessential Purcell!
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The Sixteen & Harry Christophers – Good Night, Beloved (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:45 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre:
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Escapism is the idea behind this latest offering from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, and while that’s certainly an apt concept for 2021 thus far, you don’t need to be craving escapism in order to appreciate its contents.
Read moreThe Sixteen & Harry Christophers – Palestrina, Vol. 7 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]
The Sixteen & Harry Christophers – Palestrina, Vol. 7 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:59 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Palestrina’s great art with the eagerly anticipated seventh album in the series which includes the Missa Ave Regina caelorum
Palestrina is perhaps the most famous of all Renaissance composers, certainly by name. By his death his reputation outshone all others. His musical legacy is prodigious even by the standards of the time – he wrote over 100 Masses – and he was the first Renaissance composer to have a complete edition of almost his whole output published in modern notation. Today some pieces are quite familiar, others less so, and much of his superb music is almost unknown. The seventh recording in The Sixteen’s celebrated series focuses on some of the pivotal women in Christian history – Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, St Barbara and Susannah.
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The Sixteen, Harry Christophers – Monteverdi: Messa a quattro voci et salmi of 1650, Vol. I (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:30 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
Monteverdi’s sacred vocal compositions introduced the expression of powerful and personal emotions to the world of church music. Whilst it took him a number of years to find fulfilment in his work, Monteverdi was a revered composer within his lifetime and his music is regarded as revolutionary, marking the change from the Renaissance style to that of the Baroque. This album comprises some of the finest works from Monteverdi’s years as director of music at St Mark’s in Venice, published posthumously in 1650 as the Messa a quattro voci et salmi.
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The Sixteen & Harry Christophers – A Renaissance Christmas (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:09 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coro
The Sixteen explores a stunning collection of festive works from the Renaissance capturing the joy and sincerity of this most wonderful of seasons. From the delightful simplicity of plainsong chants Resonemus laudibus and Veni, veni Emmanuel to the shining purity of Lassus’ polyphonic Videntes stellam Magi and Byrd’s jubilant This day Christ was born, this album provides a perfect alternative to traditional carols for those looking for something a little different at Christmas.
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