Search - John [Composer] Sheppard :: John Sheppard: English and Latin Church Music

Fine recording of music by this English composer

Gracejoy | New York, NY United States | 06/30/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you want to become acquainted with the music of John Sheppard, this would be a good recording to start with. If you are already familiar with and enjoy the music of Sheppard and are looking to expand your collection, then this CD will not disappoint you. Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford, is one of England's best traditional choirs of men and boys, and their sound is clear and unified throughout -- an excellent performance. The gentlemen's voices are particularly beautiful, especially in their plainsong passages, and the treble voices are bright and controlled. In addition, the CD liner notes include a very detailed introduction to Sheppard's life and music -- several pages long -- so you can educate yourself about the music you are hearing."

Masterful

Bill Andriette | Massachusetts | 02/02/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sheppard's music is like a full luxuriant bouquet-- comprised only of hard buds. It is pregnant with a knobby potentiality, like a spring tightly wound. There is a rigidity here-- as in the statuary of Egypt or of earliest Greek, with the figures standing ramrod straight, arms rooted at the sides, in contrast to the flowing forms of later sculpture in high-classical Greece and Rome. In Sheppard there is none of the sinuous, sad grace of, say, the later William Byrd in his Mass for Fours Voices, or the explicit sweetness of the even later Orlando Gibbons. But though Sheppard's music is austere and rigorous, it develops within its own hard and imposing framework to the utmost of elaboration and complexity. About to bloom is the sweetness that was to come in the next generations of English polyphony. This is one of the only recordings of Sheppard's music performed as it was composed to be sung, with boys' and men's voices. The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral sings magnificently with a massed, granite force, especially in the trebles, that is uncharacteristic for this choir, whose upper voice usually streams forth as bright, powdery diamond-dust. But granite is the apt medium for the condensed and stolid energy of this masterful music."