John Browne (1453-1490) - Stabat Iuxta Christi Crucem

[@donaldpreddle]

I absolutely agree - I cannot understand why this piece is not more often performed. It is stunningly beautiful and couldn't be sung more affectingly. I still have almost the same emotional response I had when first I heard it.

[@arguspanoptes9510]

Donald Preddle very true. I've always been a Tallis fan but I'm "getting into " Browne

[@WilliamTheByrd]

If only there were more to get into! His only surviving works are from the Eton Choirbook. Who knows how many others were burned during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries!

[@mwnyc3976]

Donald Preddle -- I agree that it's a marvelous piece - and, frankly, I think it has a much better text than the mawkish Stabat mater (whose scansion is pretty much exactly the same). Why isn't it performed more often? I think there are two reasons: (1) the TTBarBarBB scoring doesn't fit most choirs very well, and even all-male early music ensembles usually have countertenors who'd have to sit this one out; and (2) all but a few choirs/ensembles tend to run shy of programming pieces from the Eton Choirbook generally, because they're long, technically difficult to sing, and the composers and styles of the pieces are unfamiliar to most audiences (which means you'll have trouble convincing them to buy tickets).

[@mwnyc3976]

William Byrd -- Just to be pedantic ;-) I don't think music like this was burned during the Dissolution of the Monasteries: monasteries didn't generally use it, preferring to stick to chant. (Thomas Tallis didn't go to work at Canterbury Cathedral, his first job, until after its monastery was dissolved and it became a regular church that needed a choir.) This repertory was performed at colleges, wealthy parish churches, and the chapels of the King and (probably) some nobles. The calamity that cost us so much of this music was the wave of iconoclasm under Edward VI. I keep having this happy fantasy that somehow, someday, some choirbook that got hidden in a trunk or smuggled to France or Flanders for safekeeping will turn up, and we'll have masses by John Browne and William Cornysh. (My sad fantasy is that said choirbook was sent to Portugal and ended up burning in the 1755 earthquake.)

[@christopherdollins5566]

The Unorthodox Scoring might have something to do with it not being performed often; makes it an awkward piece to just drop into a programme.

[@marcvcivsnoveboracensis]

This is one of the most extraordinary pieces of music I've ever heard.

[@arguspanoptes9510]

Matthew Marcucci if you have never heard Spem in Allium by Tallis and sung by the Tallis Scholars on KZbin I heartily suggest that you do.

[@tianyinjia]

Totally agree

[@kalebzhu9947]

5:33 major 7/9/11?