Meetings 2000

2000

Monday, December 11, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Stephen Murray (Professor of Art History, Columbia University): The Virtual Cathedral: a CD-ROM tour of Amiens Cathedral

Tuesday, November 14, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Linda Jack: Ela, the Countess of Salisbury and the politics of family history.

Thursday, October 19, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Kerry McCarthy (Ph.D. Candidate in Musicology, Stanford University): Reform and revolution in Tudor church music. see details below.

Monday, September 18, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Linda Papanicolaou, PhD (art teacher & independent art history scholar): Stained glass: the art of the elusive pure color.

Tuesday, May 23, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Virginia Jansen (Professor of Art History, University of California at Santa Cruz): The problem of German gothic architecture

Monday, April 24, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Alice Tinker: Misericords in English cathedrals & abbeys (misericords are carvings under the seats of choir stalls) and Elaine Kriegh: Castles for Dummies (just kidding!)

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

  • Malcolm Miller, lecturer and guide at Chartres Cathedral: Chartres Cathedral (A special offsite talk at San Jose State University's Art Museum.)

Thursday, February 24, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Robert Scott (Associate Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences): The building of Stonehenge, 3100-1100 B.C.

Monday, January 24, 2000. 7-9pm

  • Prof. George Brown (Department of English, Stanford University): A small cathedral of learning: Venerable Bede's eighth century monastic library

Kerry McCarthy: Reform and revolution in Tudor church music

Here are some recommended CDs of Tudor church music (going more or less in chronological order, as the Sarum Seminar lecture did).

I. Status quo around the turn of the 16th century

  • John Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas
  • Tallis Scholars (Peter Phillips)
  • Gimell
  • Music from the Eton Choirbook, vols. 1-5
  • The Sixteen (Harry Christophers)
  • Hyperion

High-gothic splendor and detail -- visualize the roof vaulting of King's College Chapel translated into music.

II. The new aesthetic of the Reformation

  • Thomas Tallis: The complete English anthems
  • Tallis Scholars (Peter Phillips)
  • Gimell

Understated elegance, and some of the best melodies in the whole English repertoire, including the source of Vaughan Williams' 'Fantasia on a theme of Tallis.'

III. Return to traditional extravagance during the 1550s

  • Music of John Sheppard, vols. 1-3
  • The Sixteen (Harry Christophers)
  • Collins Classics
  • William Mundy: Vox patris caelestis
  • Tallis Scholars (Peter Phillips)
  • Gimell

Wonderful and often strange music. The Mundy is on an album (originally released as an LP in 1980, and still one of the best TS recordings) along with the better-known Allegri Miserere and a mass by Palestrina. This obscure twenty-minute B side is more than worth the price of the record.

IV. The survival of Latin music in the later sixteenth century

  • The caged Byrd
  • I Fagiolini (Robert Hollingworth)
  • Chandos
  • William Byrd: Gradualia
  • William Byrd Choir (Gavin Turner)
  • Hyperion

The Fagiolini album, by a young group from Oxford, includes motets, harpsichord pieces, and some great English songs. Byrd's Gradualia is a collection of music for the (now quite illegal) Catholic mass, in a beautiful, concentrated style that was hammered out by adversity.

All these albums should be available through amazon.com or at a good record shop. If you have questions about any other recording of English renaissance music, please e-mail me at krm @ stanford.edu; I may have run across it, and would be glad to give advice.

Happy listening!

Kerry