by Daniel Hathaway
While Stile Antico, the twelve-voice, conductorless U.K. Ensemble, sings a variety of music from the Renaissance, the repertory for its outstanding program on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at St. John’s Cathedral on Friday evening came from a single source and was brought to you courtesy of Andrew Carnegie, the steel industry, and early twentieth-century philanthropy.
The source was the ten-volume collection, Tudor Church Music, inaugurated by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, one of over twenty foundations established by the Scottish-born industrialist, whom we also have to thank for the restoration of The Book of Kells, and a lot of public libraries and church organs.
Before “TCM,” the repertory of Tudor polyphony languished in cathedral and university libraries, pretty much forgotten because the music was written in one-for-each-voice part-books, rather than in score form where it could be seen as a whole and studied. [Read more…]