Stile Antico
Puer natus est: Tudor music for Advent
Thomas Tallis’s magnificent seven-part Mass, written for the combined choirs of the Spanish and English chapels royal and first performed in December 1554, takes centre stage in this performance. It is interspersed with contemporary liturgical settings for Advent and Christmas, including the perfect miniatures of Byrd’s propers for the fourth Sunday of Advent, Robert White’s extended Magnificat and John Sheppard’s extraordinary ‘Verbum caro’. No ensemble performs this repertory more movingly than Stile Antico.