Music and Monarchy - now with subtracted jabbering!

[demoneyes]

Some may remember my grumble from last week about David Starkey perpetually chattering away over the top of the exquisite music on his show... Well, possibly I'm not alone in this as the BBC have stuck a bunch of music-only clips from the show on their website. Hurrah

Comments

[hrrunka]

Thanks for that! The occasional familiar face among the performers, too. :)

[ci5rod]

Ah, wonderful stuff. I'm so glad I acquired a love of this music (particularly Byrd and Tallis) in my teens.

[stevieannie]

I have avoided this because I simply cannot abide Starkey. Everything he says strikes me as inaccurate, biased or just plain wrong from my reading of primary resources and I have not, as yet, been able to watch a whole half hour of him without shrieking or throwing something at the TV.

Might check out the music clips though :-)

[demoneyes]

Having hunted down some recordings, it's interesting that the Alamire version there appears much lower in pitch than the others, presumably arranged for a tenor top-line rather than a counter-tenor one? Oh it's pretty enough up higher but I must confess I love the tenor/baritone/bass sound they've achieved here.

Definitely need to get me more of this music, if only because I suspect it's ideal for work in that it'll drown out distractions without being a distraction, if you know what I mean. Well, except perhaps when it just gets too pretty not to savour.

[ci5rod]

The Alamire version might well have been at the original pitch (a lot of Tudor anthems get performed a minor third up from their original pitch to work with choirs that have sopranos or trebles). It is a lovely rich sound, isn't it?

The Signum Early Music Collection looks like a cheap way of getting hold of a variety of early music. Its appearance on my Amazon BookmarkWishlist is in no way influenced by having contributions from the Kings Singers. Honest. :-)