Wednesday, 26 February 2025 at 7:30 pm
The Prince of Music
Keble Early Music Festival
Keble College Chapel, Oxford, United Kingdom
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer (10 January, 2010)
This recording of works by Tudor composer John Sheppard (1515-1558) is the fourth disc by young British ensemble Stile Antico, and the best yet. Their purity of sound, with a fullness achieved by only 14 voices, reveals Sheppard’s rich counterpoint. Despite this extraordinary finesse there’s no self-conscious beauty, only intelligent, vital simplicity. Sheppard is one of the more mysterious of “English Renaissance” composers. The meditative, 25-minute central work, “Media Vita” (“In the midst of life we are in death”), dark with agonising dissonances, is a heartfelt quest for consolation, and a formidable masterpiece.