Guest Director: Alistair Dixon (director, Chapelle du Roi)
Assistant Director: Richard Smith
Administrator: Peter Wells
Sunday 19th October - Saturday 25th October 2008
based in Wells, with Evensongs & a concert in Wells Cathedral, and a concert in St Thomas's Church
£245 (£65 deposit upon application, with £180 due on or before 22nd August 2008)
The Wells Tudor Music Course is now fully booked. To be kept informed about future courses and any cancellations on this year's course, please contact us. Please click here for information on the Wells Tudor Music Festival.
The course will focus on English sacred music of the sixteenth century, some of the most beautiful and enduring works in the liturgical repertoire. We will be surveying Latin-texted works composed prior to the reformation, but our main emphasis will be on the music of the great Elizabethan composers, including William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and Orlando Gibbons. There will be opportunities for small-group work, especially when we explore verse anthems & canticles and clandestine Latin-texted music of the latter part of the century.
We will be singing three Evensongs at Wells Cathedral during the first half of the course, and on Friday we will be performing a
lunchtime concert in the nave. We will finish on Saturday with a concert, accompanied by period instrumentalists, in St Thomas'
Church in the centre of Wells.
The first part of the course, until the Tuesday Evensong, will be under the direction of Richard Smith. We are delighted to be joined by guest tutor Alistair Dixon, who will lead the course from Wednesday. Alistair is the director and founder of Chapelle Du Roi, one of England's finest early music vocal ensembles. Chapelle Du Roi specialize in the performance of sacred music of the European renaissance and their nine-disc recording of the complete works of Thomas Tallis has met with international critical acclaim. Alistair is also a founder of Signum Records, a leading independant classical music label. He is in great demand as a course tutor and is a leading authority on Tudor vocal music.
We will be rehearsing in a variety of venues in Wells. There are several guest houses in and around Wells and, although this course is non-residential, we will do our best to help you find a place to stay.