"The Call of the Phoenix". Rare 15th-century English Church Music

For their new album, Call of the Phoenix, The Orlando Consort sings rare and exquisite church music from 15th Century England, including motets, antiphons and psalm settings by Dunstaple, Frye, Plummer and others. This program spans some seventy years of English sacred music, dating from the reigns of Henry V, Henry VI and Edward IV, and the period of unrest known as the Wars of the Roses. It illustrates the rise of the so-called contenance angloise (English manner)—valued especially for its suave melody, fluid rhythms and prevailing consonance—from its beginnings around 1420 to the repertory of the Eton Choirbook at the end of the 15th century. Sadly only a tiny proportion of the music that must have been written in this period has survived, but the pieces included in this anthology provide vivid testimony to this astonishingly rich and varied repertoire.