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.

Nicki Crush (soprano), Ria Favoreel (mezzo), Marita Thomas (alto) Mick Swithinbank (tenor & direction) Jim Foulkes (baritone) & Edward Seymour (bass) * with Teija Immonen (17-19)

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 Tallis, Peebles and Taverner. In addition, however, the concerts of recent years have branched out both geographically, to include works from mainland Europe, and chronologically, into the Middle Ages.

'Ave Maris Stella' (Hail, star of the sea) is the title of a plainsong hymn dating from no later than the 9th century, which clearly enjoyed great popularity throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It must have owed its appeal to a combination of factors: its pleasing melody, the devotion it expresses to the Virgin Mary and its poetic imagery. Ironically, the image of Mary as the star of the sea, which the poet took as his starting point, may have previously originated through a scribe's error, 'stilla' becoming 'stella'. The idea of Mary as 'maris stilla' - one drop in the ocean of humanity, albeit one uniquely chosen - is attractive enough, yet 'maris stella' possesses a different resonance, partly because it is a visual image and cannot so readily be reduced logically to any abstract notion.

Dunstaple was one of many composers who adapted this ancient hymn. His approach, a common one in his day, was to incorporate a decorated version of the plainsong melody in his setting - in this case in the top line - while leaving alternate verses to be sung to the original plainsong unadorned and unaccompanied. The Dufay piece applies the same procedure to another plainsong hymn, and Brumel, although writing later, adopted a rather similar technique in his Dies Irae.

In the Middle Ages, the rose garden was a symbol of virginity, and the rose was therefore another of the many images of the Virgin Mary, as in the medieval Christmas carol 'There is no rose of such virtue' which opens this disk. Hildegard, on the other hand, addresses her as 'frondens virga' - a flourishing branch of the tree of Jesse (referring to the family tree through which Mary traced her lineage back to him).

Also addressed to the Virgin are 'Ave Maria', Victoria's setting of the Angel Gabriel's words at the Annunciation, and the anonymous lauda 'O divina virgo'. This is in Italian, and would have been sung not by the church's regular singers but by devout laymen who formed societies for this purpose.

The pieces on this disk are drawn from four concert programmes dating from October 1998 to October 1999, one of which had the title 'Laments and Requiems'. It included the requiem-mass movements by Brumel and the little-known 17th century Lorraine composer Charles d'Helfer which are featured here, as well as Ockeghem's lament on the death of Binchois (c. 1460) and Josquin's lament on the death of Ockeghem (c. 1497), both of which are heart-felt settings of French poems sung to the accompaniment of Latin texts from the requiem mass. The words make it clear that these widely admired composers whom the world has lost are irreplaceable; at the same time, these settings and those from the requiem mass serve to remind us of our own mortality and perhaps, through some mysterious process, to reconcile us to it in some degree.

'Si quis diliget me' by Peebles was one of the first pieces learned by The Art of Music in its early days under the directorship of Eric Hartley. While the tenor sustains the notes of a passage of plainsong drawn out to such vast length that time almost seems to stand still, the other parts create slowly changing harmonies, into which small fragments of faster, but unfailingly calm, melody are woven. This piece has always retained a special place in the singers' affections, and the aim of presenting to audiences such rarely performed gems as this is the whole reason for the group's existence.

concerts recorded live in St John's Church, Luxembourg-Grund and Olingen Church

The Art of Music, directed by Mick Swithinbank