Page 345 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year
P. 345
11 March 2019
The Sixteen bring British vocal music to
Australia
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By Zoltán Szabó, 11 March 2019
British ensemble The Sixteen presented an evening of mellifluous choral music in Sydney, one of only
three performances in Australia.
The Sixteen
© Firedog
The programme was an intelligently created combination of distinctly British compositions: church music
from the Tudor and Jacobean eras alternated with madrigals by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Orlando
Gibbons. The influence of this musical style was then demonstrated with 20th-century compositions
by Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett and James MacMillan. The ensemble has been performing this exact
program in the UK and internationally for at least ten years with the title of An Immortal Legacy, and also
successfully recorded it several years ago.
The Sixteen, presumably named for having four each of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, actually
performed as ‘Eighteen’, extended with two extra sopranos. Several of the works called for
a superius and a discantus part (using 16th-century terminology), effectively dividing the sopranos into
two parts, thus this decision.
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