Arcangelo at Cambridge Early Music: “The Music more full than it was”

Programme

• Christopher Gibbons (1615-1676) - Not unto us, O Lord
• Matthew Locke (c.1621-1677) - How doth the city sit solitary
• Henry Purcell (1659-1695) - Pavan in G minor Z752
• Pelham Humfrey (1647-1674) - O give thanks unto the Lord
• John Blow (1649-1708) - God spake sometime in visions
• Maurice Greene (1696-1755) - Lord, let me know mine end
• Henry Purcell - My beloved spake Z28
• George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) - O praise the Lord with one consent HWV254

About this programme

England’s Chapel Royal, in the years before and after Oliver Cromwell’s Republic, nurtured some of the nation’s finest composers. After attending one of its services in 1662, Samuel Pepys noted how ‘the music was more full than it was’, referring to improvements made since the restoration of Charles II.

This is the first concert in Arcangelo's 'English Baroque Journey', a multi-concert series created with Wigmore Hall, celebrating the origins, development and progress of the Baroque in England from the Restoration to the death of Handel. The journey begins with sacred vocal music, one of the rare areas of relative musical continuity across a turbulent and conflicted period, taking in emotionally-charged anthems by Pelham Humfrey, Maurice Greene and Matthew Locke and ending with Handel’s majestic setting of words from the Book of Psalms.