The Crown of Thorns is the second volume in a series of five discs by choral group the Sixteen under Harry Christophers devoted to the contents of The Eton Choirbook, an early sixteenth century manuscript that remains one of the few primary sources for late fourteenth-century English Latin service music, having escaped the purgation that was English King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monarchies. Its survival may have had something to do with the fact that this manuscript was created by musicians who were favorites of ...
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The Crown of Thorns is the second volume in a series of five discs by choral group the Sixteen under Harry Christophers devoted to the contents of The Eton Choirbook, an early sixteenth century manuscript that remains one of the few primary sources for late fourteenth-century English Latin service music, having escaped the purgation that was English King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monarchies. Its survival may have had something to do with the fact that this manuscript was created by musicians who were favorites of Henry VII for the cathedral in the college he founded, Eton, and perhaps Henry VIII was loath to burn a book so valued by his father. Whether or not this is true, it contains some of the finest music to survive from this place and era, and all but three of the works of John Browne -- possibly the leading English composer of this generation -- are contained within this one volume. Browne figures importantly in The Crown of Thorns, a collection that draws together three settings of the...
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