An Old Belief

An Old Belief takes its name from the title of one of Sir Charles Hubert Parry’s Songs of Farewell, a collection of six richly scored and deeply affecting choral works written between 1916 and 1918, at the height of World War I. Each motet follows in the tradition of the finely wrought Victorian part song while mourning the passing of an age. As a prelude to these remarkable works, The Sixteen bring their purity of sound and impeccable phrasing to a fascinating selection of music. Three works by Elizabethan composer Thomas Campion, three haunting medieval carols, and the premiere of the beautiful new motet “An Unexpected Shore,” by Cecilia McDowall, join Herbert Howells’ “Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing,” written in 1964 for a memorial concert on the first anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.