This will be a presentation of British choral music by one of the world’s finest choral conductors, detailing the growth of the British choral tradition, both sacred and secular, with emphasis on the Renaissance and post-1900 periods, using examples from one of the oldest British music publishers, Novello.

 

The presentation will focus primarily on two core periods of British choral music - The Renaissance and the 20th and 21st centuries. Hill will discuss the role of choral music in the lives of composers, performers, and institutions in both the Renaissance and the present day.

 

Renaissance

 

This part of the presentation will focus on the publications The Tallis Psalter: Psalms and Anthems and the The Gibbons Hymnal edited by leading scholar David Skinner, and Tudor Anthems edited by Lionel Pike. The featured works will span the period when, for the first time, services were said and sung in English, not Latin, and composers such as Tallis and Gibbons created a distinctive English style of exquisite purity.

 

20th and 21st Centuries

 

This part of the presentation will focus firstly on leading British choral composers from the mid-late 20th century - including Herbert Howells, Kenneth Leighton, Richard Rodney Bennett, John McCabe and John Tavener - and then the present era - including the works of Paul Mealor (the composer of the anthem for the Royal Wedding), Tarik O’Regan, Judith Weir, James Whitbourn and Owain Park.