Join the Bruegel Consort for an evening of extravagant early Tudor sacred choral music associated with Christmas and its surrounding feast days.

Our programme opens with the Windsor-based composer Walter Lambe’s (c.1450-1504 or later) Christmas antiphon Nesciens mater, a work preserved in the lavishly illuminated Eton Choirbook. A selection of five movements from three different Masses intended for various feast days follow, interspersed with their plainchant propers drawn from early sixteenth-century English manuscripts: Gaudete in Domino for the Third Sunday of Advent by Thomas Packe (fl.1490-1510), a little-known composer associated with Exeter Cathedral; Tecum principium for Midnight Mass on Christmas Day by Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521), longtime gentleman of the Chapel Royal and a composer beloved by both Henry VII and Henry VIII; and the Mass for St Stephen’s Day (26 Dec) by Nicholas Ludford (c.1485-1557), undoubtedly composed for St Stephen’s, Westminster, where Ludford spent much of his career. At the close of the programme listen for the thrilling finale of Ludford’s Agnus Dei and its petition for peace, ‘dona nobis pacem’.

Lilly Vadaneaux soprano
Doraly Gill alto
Nick Walters tenor
Angus Champion tenor
Harry Elliot bass