Album Description

A brand new recording of Elizabethan and Restoration Devotional Songs to the lute and theorbo by Thomas Campian, John Dowland, Pelham Humfrey & Henry Purcell.

Continuing its work with the rising stars of the early music world, CORO is delighted to be releasing a brand new recording by two of The Sixteen’s principal members - soprano, Elin Manahan Thomas and theorbo and lute player, David Miller.

The 17th-century devotional songs on this disc were written against a backdrop of furious historical dramas and lurching tides of fortune. The songs chosen reflect these assorted times and contexts, and are accordingly diverse. Ravish’d with Sacred Extasies (a quote taken directly from Playford's ‘Harmonia Sacrae’) explores some of the most beautiful Elizabethan devotional songs ranging from the doctrinally eloquent to the theologically unsteady, from the spare and the restrained to the opulent and the overblown, from Dowland’s small cluster of late devotional songs to Purcell’s flowery and luscious settings.

Artists

Track Listing

Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
1. A Morning Hymn (Thou wakefull Shepherd)

Purcell 
2. How Long Great God?

John Dowland (1563-1626)
3. Preludium

Thomas Campian (1567-1619/20)
4. Never weather-beaten Saile
5. Author of Light

John Wilson (1595-1674)
6. Prelude 18

Pelham Humfrey (1647-1674)
7. Sleep downy sleep, come close mine eyes
8. A Hymne to God the Father

John Lawrence (?-1635)
9 - 12. Lute Suite

Purcell 
13. The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation

Dowland 
Trilogy: 
14. Thou mighty God. 1. part
15. When Davids life by Saul. 2. part
16. When the poore Criple. 3. part 

Dowland
17. Galliard to Lachrimae 
18. Where Sinne sore wounding

Purcell 
19. A Devine Hymn (Lord, what is Man)

Anon
20. Miserere, my Maker 

Dowland
21. In this trembling shadow
22.  If that a Sinners sighes be Angels foode 

Purcell 
23. Sleep, Adam, Sleep, and take thy rest
24.  An Evening Hymn (Now that the Sun hath veil’d his Light)

TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 1hr 11mins