Nicki Crush (soprano), Ria Favoreel (mezzo), Marita Thomas (alto)

Mick Swithinbank (tenor & direction) Jim Foulkes (baritone) & Edward Seymour (bass)

featuring also (tracks 13 and 14): Barbara Hall (soprano), Teija Immonen (alto), Henry Wickens (baritone) and Colin Buckland (bass)

The Art of Music takes its name from the title of an

Nicki Crush (soprano), Ria Favoreel (mezzo), Marita Thomas (alto)

Mick Swithinbank (tenor & direction) Jim Foulkes (baritone) & Edward Seymour (bass)

featuring also (tracks 13 and 14): Barbara Hall (soprano), Teija Immonen (alto), Henry Wickens (baritone) and Colin Buckland (bass)

The Art of Music takes its name from the title of an anonymous treatise on musical theory written in Scotland in the late 16th century. The group was set up in 1993 by Eric Hartley with the principal aim of performing English and Scottish renaissance church music. This still remains at the core of the group's repertoire, and is represented on this disc by Sheppard, Tallis, Cornysh, Carver and Browne. In addition, however, recent concerts have branched out both geographically, to include works from mainland Europe, and chronologically, into the Middle Ages.

Since its inception, the group has consisted of six singers; to date, in fact, the only change of personnel has been the departure of Eric Hartley himself and his replacement by Jim Foulkes. Many of the masterpieces of the Renaissance are scored for five or six voices (in earlier music, three or four was the norm), but a few call for larger forces. Occasionally therefore, the assistance of a small number of additional performers has been enlisted, as was the case for part of the Lenten programme included on this disc, and The Art of Music would like to thank those concerned for making some ambitious projects possible.

The first of the two concerts represented on this disc offers a panorama of 500 years of religious music, from the 12th to the 16th centuries. The earliest pieces of all consist of a single voice-line: the plainchant Salve Regina (anonymous) and Ave generosa by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote both the words and the music. Both pieces are addressed to the Virgin Mary. Polyphony originated in the increasingly free addition of extra voices to plainchant. By the mid-13th century, composers were writing pieces like Alle psallite, where the lowest voice sings chant, albeit in a dance rhythm, while the upper voices are assigned independent material. Representing the later Middle Ages, the Johannes Regis Kyrie is built around the secular melody "L'homme armé", whereas the works by John Dunstaple and Johannes de Lymburgia are freely composed. Similarly, Browne's Salve Regina (late 15th century) owes nothing to the plainchant setting of the same text; yet in the mid-16th century we find John Sheppard still using plainchant as a cantus firmus throughout his polyphony, a device which had never been entirely abandoned.

The second concert comprises music for Lent. Pange lingua and Tristis are settings for Maundy Thursday, Tenebrae and Woefully arrayed for Good Friday. The Gesualdo pieces graphically depict events from the Passion. In Tristis, Christ addresses the Disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane; Tenebrae describes His crucifixion and death. O bone Jesu is a penitential piece for any season, and If ye love me looks forward to the more cheering prospect of Pentecost. O bone Jesu calls for special comment, as it was originally scored for 19 voices: 2 groups of trebles and 17 solo men (including altos). For the purposes of this performance, it was necessary to rescore the work for 10 voices. In the substantial 'solistic' sections of the work, which were in any case scored for fewer than 10 voices in the original, not a note has been lost; only in the full, chordal sections was pruning required, which was carried out wherever possible by eliminating doublings. The main loss therefore is in the contrast in sound between small groups of soloists and the massive power of the full choir envisaged by Carver, although the singers endeavoured to convey this contrast dynamically.