Passion & Resurrection – Music inspired by Holy Week

This programme presents settings of texts inspired by the events of Holy Week and Easter. Two settings of the poem Woefully arrayed provide a particular focal point, one by the early renaissance English composer William Cornysh (1465-1523), and the other a recent setting written for Stile Antico by John McCabe (b.1939). The remaining music presents a crosssection of Renaissance composers from England and the European continent, taking us from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, through Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper, the Crucifixion on Good Friday to the resurrection on Easter day. Stylistically, a particularly interesting comparison can be made between the English pieces presented here and those from the continent. While it was one Englishman (John Dunstaple) who, in the 1420s and 30s had laid the foundations of the Renaissance style on both sides of the Channel, by the end of the fifteenth century English music had developed a strikingly individual voice; this insularity was largely to remain until the early 17th century, in spite of an unmistakable ‘drip-feed’ of continental influences. This is in marked contrast to the constant cross-fertilization seen amongst composers on the European mainland during this period. This fact can be attributed largely to the fact that, for obvious geographical reasons, English composers were comparatively less-travelled than their continental counterparts, many of whom spent time working in at least two different countries. In sixteenth-century England, political and religious upheaval also had a large part to play in the development of new styles.