The Sixteen choir

The Sixteen is one of the jewels in the musical crown of Britain. Internationally recognised as one of the finest choirs of our time, it is admired for performances combining clarity and precision with beauty and dramatic intensity. It concentrates on the heritage of early English polyphony, masterpieces of the Renaissance and Baroque, and a diversity of twentieth century choral work. The choir is complimented for larger scale works by its orchestra, The Symphony of harmony and Invention, and through it Harry Christophers brings fresh insights to the music of Purcell, Monteverdi, JS Bach and Handel. Many prize-winning recordings reflect the quality and inspiration of the group's work. Recent years have seen the group's debuts at the Vienna Musikverein, the Brisbane, Covent Garden, Halle, Istanbul and Lucerne festivals, and at the Lisbon Opera in a new production of Monmteverdi's "Il Ritorno d'Ulisse". In 2000 The Sixteen made a Choral Pilgrimage to the finest English cathedrals, returning pre-reformation music written for these buildings to its home. This met with a huge public response. In coming months the group makes major tours of Japan and the USA, returns to the Covent Garden Festival, New York's Lincoln Center, Manchester's Bridgewater Hall and London's Barbican Centre, and makes debuts at the Scarlatti Festival, Italy, Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, and the Belfast, Brighton, Chicester, Norwich and Three Choirs festivals.

The Sixteen's conductor and founder, Harry Christophers, has directed the group throughout Europe, America and the Far East, gaining a distinghished reputation through a variety of projects and over seventy recordings. He is a regular guest conductor of orchestras such as the English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, and in the USA has conducted the St Louis Symphony. Increasinly busy in opera, he has conducted Monteverdi's Il Rittorno d'Ulise, Gluck's Orfeo and Mozart's Magic Flute for Lisbon Opera House, and in September 2000 made his debut for English National Opera conducting Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea.

The Sixteen's seventy CD recordings have won many accolades, including two Grands Prix du Disque, two Deutsche Schallplatten prizes and the 1992 Gramophone Early Music Award for the first of the five volume Music from the Eton Choirbook. Their Stravinsky and Poulenc disc with the BBC Philharmonic and Frank Martin disc won Diapason d'Or awards in 1995 and 1996. Recordings span music over six centuries, from simple plainchant to the most virtuosic 20th century choral writing: medieval English music, Robert Carver, Sheppard, Taverner, Tallis, Byrd, the Portuguese 17th century composers Melgas and Rebelo, Purcell, JS Bach, Handel's oratorios, Poulenc, Britten, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Lesur, Bernstein and Tavener.

Discography

An Eternal Harmony

The vast power of the Royal Courts of England and Scotland may be long gone but the sumptuous sounds of their worship are not lost. This disc brings together music of some of the most outstanding but now little-known composers of the 15th and 16th centuries, and introduces a major new work by one of this century's most remarkable composers, James Macmillan. Robert Carver's mesmeric setting of the devotional text "O bone Jesu" has long been admired and has now proved an inspiration to James MacMillan who has chosen with this special commission for The Sixteen, to clothe the same text in his own musical language of reflective beauty. "This 25th Anniversary CD is a delight, and like all great recordings it gets better the more you listen to it." - BBC Radio 3, CD Review

Tomás Luis de Victoria - Requiem 1605

This new recording features the celebrated Requiem of 1605, Victoria’s final composition, a work of beguiling beauty and sumptuous simplicity. It can be seen as the summation of both his art and the Spanish Renaissance tradition. The beautiful plainsong on which it is structured can be heard arching through the texture, forming a delicate and sinuous line throughout. Subtly accompanied by a chamber organ and bajón, it is recorded here with the same forces as may well have performed it originally in the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales. The Requiem is preceded by Marian Antiphons interspersed with three motets setting texts from the Song of Songs.

Barber - Agnus Dei

This collection of American choral music spanning the 20th century features familiar and less well-known composers, from the lyrical traditionalism of Barber by way of Bernstein and Copland to the counterpoint, rhythmic verve and neo-classicism of Irving Fine. The disc finishes with the dreamily haunting Acrostic Song from Final Alice by David del Tredici.

Allegri Miserere

The haunting tones of Allegri's Miserere are uniquely and instantly recognizable even to those who know little sacred music. It was only ever sung in the Sistine Chapel, where Allegri himself was a chorister. Palestrina had sung there before Allegri was born and his best-known work is Miss Papae Marcelli. Like his Stabat Mater it combines exquisite poise with a translucent setting of words. Chromaticism and blossoming cadences are employed to heart-rending effect in Lotti's eight-part Crucifixus in a unique blend of 16th and 18th century musical styles.

6973 CD $15.98

Frank Martin

Frank Martin was arguably Switzerland’s greatest composer. His shimmering Mass for Double Choir, completed in 1926 as ‘an affair between God and himself’, is one of the finest settings of the 20th century, yet it had to wait forty-one years to be shared with others in its first performance. This collection of his choral music also includes his cantata for Switzerland’s National Day and the Ode to Music, along with some charming part-songs. Eclectic and technically superb these pieces display a style that is serenely individual.

Flowering of Genius

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.

7019 CD $15.98

Ikon of Light - Sir John Tavener

Despite the mystic beauty of his music, John Tavener's place in Western music is a controversial one. His desire to create musical ikons for a time in which he believes 'man has lost his belief not only in God, but also in himself' is provocative. Yet part of the attraction of his music must surely arise from its symbolic nature, a reflection of his deeply-held Orthodox faith. This collection cvers a wide range of Tavener's celebrated choral output and includes his immediately popular setting of William Blake's The Lamb, and the luminously spiritual, Ikon of Light.

Thomas Tallis : Spem in alium

Newly recorded in the round and in surround sound, Thomas Tallis' 40-part motet, Spem in alium, one of the great landmarks of polyphony, forms the centre-piece of this dazzling CD. Under the theme, Music for Monarchs and Magnates' The Sixteen draws together music by Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons and Thomas Tomkins, some of it never before recorded, some indeed not performed since the time of its writing. It explores the use of music for ceremonial, even propaganda purposes by the state, contrasted with the composers' private use of biblical texts to give public vent to their own sometimes dangerous views in an England torn by political and religious strife. Alongside the usual 40 voice setting of Spem in Alium is an English version of the same work - Sing and Glorify - which was adapted to an English text for King James I to honour his son Henry, the newly-annointed Prince of Wales. With cornetts, sackbuts, dulcians and organs in place of some voices, this is a glorious complement to the usual version.

Victoria - The Call Of The Beloved

The great Spanish composer and priest, Victoria, devoted his life to writing supremely uplifting and intense music throughout the church calendar. The Call of the Beloved includes some of the earliest triple-choir music ever to be published and is a reminder of Victoria's joyous and passionate music, complementing his more austere Requiem and music for Holy Week. "If one can ever achieve complete emotional expression through the power of music, then here it is." - Harry Christophers. "This is a beautifully prepared and rewarding recording that deepens our appreciation of one of the greatest masters of the renaissance." - Gramophone

7006 CD $15.98

A Ceremony of Carols

Britten's A Ceremony of Carols is a masterpiece composed on board ship as Britten returned to England from the U.S.A. in 1948, a touching evocation of boyhood lost but never forgotten. A Boy was Born is a work that first made Britten famous, based on a theme and variations of astonishing ingenuity. The Missa Brevis, written for the boys of Westminster Cathedral, is a gem that in some ways looks forward to the War Requiem which came two years later. 69 minutes.

Hodie - An English Christmas Collection

The recordings of The Sixteen have been treasured by collectors of superb choral music Hodie is a beautifully programmed disc of seasonal music from England's greatest composers Featured are perennial favorites by William Walton, Edmund Rubbra, John Tavener, Herbert Howells, and Peter Warlock and as a very special centerpiece, one of the all time critically acclaimed performances of Benjamin Britten's ever-popular A Ceremony of Carols.

7001 CD $15.98

A Choral Pilgrimage

Inspired by a Millenium pilgrimage made by this British ensemble, through English Cathedrals "from York to Cantebury," the works collected here are drawn from the canon of sixteenth century English composers of the Tudor period. Recorded at the cathedrals themselves, such as St Jude's in Hampstead, the sound of the Sixteen can be distinguished both by its exceptional clarity and brilliance, and by it's fullness. Arrangements are flush with contrapuntal phrases, and suffused with a graceful tranquility, such as Taverner's "O Splendor Gloriae." Though each of these tracks was previously released on one the 70 (seventy!) CD's produced by this mixed choir since their formation over twenty years ago, their grouping here adds to the loveliness of each, as a bouquet complements the beauty of each flower.

6451 CD $15.98

In Honore J.S. Bach

Thomas Tallis - Sacred Choral Works

Christmas Music from Medieval & Renaissance Europe

A fine collection of Christmas music from medieval and renaissance Europe by this highly accomplished choir under the direction of Harry Christophers. Many works from England including the stunning Tallis composition "Videte Miraculuum' and several carols from Europe including those by Jacob Handl, Jean Mouton and Orlandus Lassus.

Christus Natus Est - An Early English Christmas

Verbum caro
Salutation Carol
Nowell, sing we, both all and some
Gaudete
Hail Mary full of Grace
Gloria in excelsis
There is no rose
Nowell, nowell: Out of your sleep
Remember O thou man
Quid petis, O Fili?
Sweet was the song
Lullaby my sweet little baby
Are rex angelorum
Drive the cold winter away
Nowell, nowell: The boares head
The old year now has passed away
Angelus ad Virginem
Nowell, nowell: Dieu vous garde
Make we joy
Verbum caro

Amongst the exhaustive catalogue of recordings devoted to Christmas music, this particular example - focusing on works written in England during the Middle Ages and Renaissance - can be warmly recommended indeed. The performances, as ever by this superb choir, are polished and beautifully executed, and the program is varied both in terms of the selection of pieces (carols, motets, ballads, chant...) and also in the interpretations (usually choir or consort but sometimes 1 singer, occasionally accompanied by instruments - harp, lute, rebec/fiddle, drums). Furthermore, a number of the tracks constitute probably the best available performances of certain works.

8749 CD $14.95

The Sixteen

Discography

An Eternal Harmony

Tomás Luis de Victoria - Requiem 1605

Barber - Agnus Dei

Allegri Miserere

Frank Martin

Flowering of Genius

Ikon of Light - Sir John Tavener

Thomas Tallis : Spem in alium

Victoria - The Call Of The Beloved

A Ceremony of Carols

Hodie - An English Christmas Collection

A Choral Pilgrimage

In Honore J.S. Bach

Thomas Tallis - Sacred Choral Works

Christmas Music from Medieval & Renaissance Europe

Christus Natus Est - An Early English Christmas

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