More Splendid than the Sun

More Splendid Than the Sun highlights the joys and miracles of the Virgin Mary’s life as expressed in sacred polyphony from early sixteenth-century England. Providing the centrepiece is an extravagant, luminous six-voice Mass by Westminster-based Nicholas Ludford (c.1485-1557). The Mass is based on the plainsong Videte miraculum (‘behold the miracle of the mother of the Lord’) for the feast day of Candlemas. The movements of the Mass are interspersed with several plainsong melodies for Candlemas, including Videte miraculum, which refers to Mary as bearing a ‘noble burden’. Taverner’s magnificent five-voice Marian antiphon Gaude plurimum remained popular in England nearly sixty years after his death: the text encourages Mary, ‘the happiest woman of all who lived’, to rejoice on account of the grace her son brings to humanity.

Bruegel Consort is a five to six-part early music vocal ensemble specialising in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sacred polyphony. The ensemble particularly enjoys exploring and performing lesser-known music from the early Tudor period, led by the research of tenor Nick Walters. Bruegel Consort has been selected as a BREMF Emerging Ensemble for 2026-27 and was the recipient of the Stile Antico Ensemble Development Bursary Scheme from 2024-26. "The Consort performed its complex polyphony with exquisite expressiveness and unadorned veracity."