The Flowering of Genius - The Sixteen

Music from a turning point in history .... the short-lived marriage between Mary Tudor and Philip II of Spain, although barren and doomed, resulted in a glorious flowering of Anglo-Spanish music which saw the greatest musicians from the two nations meeting and working together.The music for a flamboyant Christmas Day ceremony in St. Paul's Cathedral in 1554 was a celebratory focal point of an extraordinary resurgence of the Catholic faith in England, fuelled by hopes, soon to be dashed, that Mary was pregnant.

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)
1. Ave Virgo sanctissima

Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
2. Suscipe quaeso

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)
3. O vos omnes
4. Vere languores
5. O Domine Jesu Christe

Tallis
6. Agnus Dei from mass "Puer natus"

Victoria
7. Super flumina Babylonis
8. Vadam et circuibo
9. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes

John Sheppard (1500-1558)
10. Verbum caro

Philippe de Monte (1521-1603)
11. Super flumina Babylonis

William Byrd (1543-1623)
12. Quomodo cantabimus