Queen of Heaven

Cambridge Renaissance Voices return to the glorious acoustic of King’s Lynn Minster with a joyful programme of Renaissance polyphony written in celebration of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven. It takes us on a journey through the music of the 16th and early 17th century, from the Franco-Flemish Josquin des Prez, who spent much of his career in Italy, to the Spanish masters Alonso Lobo and Francisco Guerrero, working together in Seville, and Tomas Luis de Victoria, who succeeded Palestrina as Maestro at the Pontifical Seminary in Rome, eventually returning to Spain for a royal appointment in Madrid. The tradition of Marian polyphony developing through these and many other composers of the European Renaissance ranges from gentle meditative settings of the Ave Maria and the prayer for compline Ave Regina Caelorum which culminates in the triumphal injuction ‘Gaude Virgo Gloriosa’, to full-blown polyphonic exuberance in the celebratory Easter antiphon, Regina Coeli Laetare: Queen of Heaven, Rejoice.