Anne Boleyn's Songbook: Music & Passions Of A Tudo

ALAMIRE WILKINSON HERINGMAN WHATLEY

Anne Boleyn, the most famous of Henry VIII’s six wives, was brought up for a time under the guardianship of Margaret of Austria, patron to some of the most famous composers in all Europe, and then in the French court before her return to England in 1522. It was in France where the young Anne developed her keen musical tastes, and when a collection of her favorite works began to be assembled into what is now known as the Anne Boleyn Songbook (Royal College of Music, MS 1070). Here Alamire explores the finest works in the Songbook by the greatest composers of the early 16th c., including Compère, Brumel, Mouton, and Josquin. Performances by Alamire are interspersed with French chansons and instrumental items for lute, harp and voice. The program concludes with a most haunting setting of ‘O Deathe rock me asleep’, not from the Songbook but possibly linked to Anne’s fate while awaiting her execution in the Tower of London in 1536.

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