Plebs

Die politische Rolle der stadtromischen Plebs in der Kaiserzeit engages with the topical question of the political role of the Roman plebs in the imperial period and seeks to reconstruct how it may have looked in practice and how it can be defined.

Since the ninth century, the routes to Santiago de Compostela leading to the sanctuary of St. James have attracted countless pilgrims and exercised a potent mystique. What has received less attention is the music originally sung during the services in honour of the saint. Thanks to Marcel Peres’s in-depth study of the Codex Calixtinus, preserved at the Cathedral of Santiago, this recording can present a reconstruction of the musical gems contained in the rare twelfth-century manuscript which attests to multiple stylistic influences encountered on this indispensable and all-embracing pilgrimage.

Since the ninth century, the routes to Santiago de Compostela leading to the sanctuary of St. James have attracted countless pilgrims and exercised a potent mystique. What has received less attention is the music originally sung during the services in honour of the saint. Thanks to Marcel Peres’s in-depth study of the Codex Calixtinus, preserved at the Cathedral of Santiago, this recording can present a reconstruction of the musical gems contained in the rare twelfth-century manuscript which attests to multiple stylistic influences encountered on this indispensable and all-embracing pilgrimage.

Here, The Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge perform Finnissy’s deep, rich and fulfilling music – created as part of a residency, which combines evocative works directly inspired by Tudor Music from the choir's library with more free-form inspirations of this material by the composer. It has taken Conductor and Director Andrew Nethsingha four years to gradually learn the pieces on this recording. He says it “has been a deeply enriching experience which I want others to share”.

Pious Anthems & Voluntaries features a new nine-part cycle, inspired by the architecture of the College and its Chapel, and composed by Michael Finnissy, St John's Composer in Residence 2016-19.

This new album from The Orlando Consort charts the radical development of music between the late thirteenth and mid fifteenth centuries—the transition from what is at essence embellished chant to the extraordinary mathematical intricacies of experimental polyphony.