Thursday 24 April 2014 10:00pm to 11:00pm
10.00pm, King's College Chapel
About
Josquin Desprez Missa l'Homme Armé Sexti Toni
Karlheinz Stockhausen Gesang der Jünglinge (1956)
Jonathan Harvey Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980)
The Kings' Men
Jonathan Green, sound diffusion
The series launch concert celebrating musical visionaries spanning some five centuries. Stockhausen's electroacoustic masterpiece Gesang der Jünglinge was composed in 1956 and ushered in an unprecedented new world of electronic sound which is counterpointed with the age-old voice of a choirboy singing "Praise the Lord". Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco continues this ecclesiastical theme with a work celebrating the medieval Great Bell of Winchester Cathedral, whose inscription provides the theme: "I Lament the Dead, I Call the Living to Prayer, I Count the Fleeing Hours". Interspersed with these electroacoustic works is the Missa Super l'Homme Armé by Josquin Desprez. Josquin's long life (c.1440-1521) spanned to within a year or two the foundation and the completion of King's College Chapel. This mass is a remarkable work, whose closing Agnus Dei is a technical tour-de-force - a canon whose beautiful and other-worldly sound looks forward to twentieth-century minimalism. Its performance here by The King's Men promises to be an unforgettable experience.
TICKETS: £10/£5 concessions