Elizabeth Mundy

Royal Rhymes and Rounds is the King's Singers' contribution to the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne in 2012. There are ballads, part songs, madrigals, rounds, and anthems written during the reigns of (and some also in honor of) Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. The music from the times of Henry and Elizabeth I is especially strong since it was the era of a flowering of English song, which then lay relatively dormant for several centuries. The composers include such luminaries as William Cornysh, Orlando Gibbons, John Dowland, and Thomas Weelkes, as well as Henry himself, whose rousing ballad Pastime with good companie opens the album. It's in this transparent repertoire that the group sounds its absolute best. The singers' immaculate intonation, focused tone quality, and sensitive musicianship are remarkable.

Jordi Savall & Hesperion XX - Elizabethan Consort Music, 1558 - 1603 (1998) {Alia Vox AV 9804}
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© 1998 Alia Vox | AV 9804
Classical / Renaissance / Baroque / Chamber Music

Although the first full consort of viols did not arrive in England until 1540, there were actually several intriguing examples of what are now called "consort" music from before that time. Of course, the homogenous viol consort became supreme, and the present program (also featuring some 2-lute arrangements) focuses on the first part of that repertory. This developed at Elizabeth's court in the 1570s & 1580s, among professional musicians, but based on relatively restrictive models. Some pieces in the present program are composed freely, heralding the next step in consort development which, along with the small output of Byrd, allowed the English consort idiom to fully flower. Of course that was followed closely by the even larger and more famous repertory of consort music by composers such as Gibbons which was eventually geared more toward amateur players.

In 1601, English composer Thomas Morley published a volume of madrigals called The Triumphs of Oriana. The music was intended to honor the aging Queen Elizabeth I, referred to as Oriana for reasons about which historians disagree (one version of the story is given in the detailed and informative notes by Thomas Elias). Each madrigal concluded with some variant of the couplet "Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana/Long live fair Oriana," allowing the composer (there were 23 different ones for the 25 pieces) to strut his polyphonic stuff at the end of the song.