Blue Heron Releases the Final Disc in 5-CD Peterhouse Set

Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol. 5 (BHCD1007). Blue Heron / Scott Metcalfe, director

• Anonymous: Missa sine nomine
• Hugh Sturmy: Exultet in hac die
• Robert Hunt: Ave Maria mater dei
• John Mason: Ve nobis miseris

Restored by Nick Sandon
Street Date: March 17, 2017 Total Time: 55:35

Blue Heron announces the release of the final volume in its pathbreaking five-CD series of music from the Peterhouse Partbooks. Copied circa 1541 for Canterbury Cathedral, the partbooks are the largest and most important source of English sacred music surviving from the period before the death of Henry VIII and the onset of the English reformation (1547).

The new recording contains the world premiere recording of a Mass by an anonymous English composer from the first half of the 16th-century. It also includes an antiphon addressed to St. Augustine of Canterbury which is the only surviving work of Hugh Sturmy; a short and dramatic of Ave Maria mater Dei by Robert Hunt, whose Stabat Mater is a highlight of volume 3 of the series; and the sonorous and captivating Ve nobis miseris by John Mason, for men’s voices in five parts. All the works have been restored by the English musicologist Nick Sandon.

It is available now pre-order through Amazon and iTunes. Visit blueheron.org for links; a Preview video can be viewed on YouTube.

Previously released CDs in the series are: Vol. 1, Hugh Aston: Three Marion Antiphons (2010); Vol. 2, Nicholas Ludford: Missa Regnum mundi (2012); Vol. 3, Nicholas Ludford: Missa Inclina cor meum (2013); and Vol. 4, Robert Jones: Missa Spes nostra (2015). The recording project was supported in part by a four-year A;fred Nash Patterson grant from Choral Arts New England.