Stile Antico’s Wigmore performance of ‘A Divine Hope’ was highly praised by MusicOMH.com’s reviewer, who wrote that “All the items were approached withe rigorously applied musical intelligence that this repertoire needs… an internalised understanding of the role of each voice line in fashioning the texture; an innate feel for the dynamic shape of phrases; an immersive familiarity with the text, and how its meaning can be brought out through volume, speed, attack and timbre.” The full review can be read on the MusicOMH site ..read more

We are delighted to announce the appointment of baritone Gareth Thomas to join Stile Antico! Gareth was a choral scholar at Jesus College, Cambridge, studying Music. Alongside performing regularly with groups such as the BBC Singers and Tenebrae, he is a member of the choir of HM Chapel Royal Tower of London. He is also an experienced editor of Renaissance polyphony, and the group has already used a number of his wonderful editions. For more information, visit www.gareththomasmusic.co.uk. Gareth says “I am utterly delighted to be joining Stile Antico. Early Music has long been my passion – bot ..read more

  Ahead of Stile Antico’s forthcoming concerts and workshops in Newcastle and Leeds, Classical Music magazine has published a feature about our Byrd-related outreach work! To read the feature, please click here. Details of all our forthcoming concerts and workshops are available on our Events pagse ..read more

The Stile Antico Foundation is seeking a Youth Trustee for a year’s term intended to commence in May 2024. The Foundation is committed to providing young people with engaging opportunities to enhance and broaden their skills. This is an excellent chance for a young professional or student to offer their own contributions and perspective to the Foundations’ operations whilst also gaining invaluable experience of charity governance within the music sector. No prior trustee experience is required, and applicants should be aged between 20 and 28 years old as of May 2024. Exceptional candidat ..read more

In the closing years of Elizabeth I’s reign, Byrd retreated to the village of Stondon Massey in Essex, where he continued to write for the Anglican church but, as a committed Catholic, also composed music for private, or clandestine, performances by the local Catholic gentry. Among his Catholic masterpieces are two masses. Stile Antico takes the Mass for Four Voices as the foundation for this programme and threads shorter pieces between the movements. Although this disturbs concentration on the Mass, it allows for heightened contrasts, for example with the beautiful, late radiance of Retire my ..read more

Following on from the success and popularity of our Come & Sing events in Oxford in November 2022 and in March 2023 (with added evensong), another Come & Sing with evensong was held in Temple Church, London on Saturday 1st July. The event was part of Temple Music’s four-day William Byrd Festival marking the 400th anniversary of Byrd’s death. We performed our England’s Nightingale programme on the opening evening of the festival, and concerts followed by Fretwork, Mahan Esfahani and Westminster Cathedral Choir, alongside talks by Kerry McCarthy and Dr Tracy Borman and three choral serv ..read more

Temple Music’s William Byrd Festival, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the composer’s death, offers two lectures, three services, and four concerts. Prior commitments mean I have had to restrict myself to two of the concerts, but if the rest is anything like this opening event from Stile Antico, listeners would be well advised to flock to the Temple Church now…. The opening Emendemus in Melius made for a splendid concert introit, Stile Antico’s sound warm and rounded, doubtless assisted further by the Temple acoustic — and, of course, by Byrd’s music itself… O Lord, make thy servant El ..read more

The first of the two concerts corresponded to the English vocal group Stile Antico. The programme, curiously titled after a work by John Sheppard, Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria, is truly a well-deserved tribute to one of the greatest composers the United Kingdom has given mankind, William Byrd (ca.1540-1623 ), on the 400th anniversary of his death, an event that sadly has gone completely unnoticed in our country until now. In the United Kingdom they are not wasting the opportunity and I know that a multitude of events are taking place around this figure, not only offering concerts of his monumenta ..read more

We were talking a few days ago about the 60th Week of Religious Music in Cuenca. We have had the opportunity to attend some of their most important concerts… With the all-encompassing title of Gaude, Gaude, Gaude, Maria, we heard wonderful music from the Elizabethan era, that of William Byrd, whose fourth centenary of death is celebrated, highlighted in particular. Nine of his pieces were presented, each one most beautiful, by the twelve voices of the miraculous British group Stile Antico. Three sopranos, three mezzos, three tenors and three basses, who act without a conductor and who command ..read more

There will be many recordings of Byrd’s music in this 400th anniversary year of his death, but few will match the superb balance and poise of these performances from Stile Antico. Their selection focuses on his later collections, with works from his Gradualia (1605), Psalms, Songs and Sonnets (1611) and his Mass settings of the 1590s. The title of the volume includes the word ‘Renaissance’ but Byrd’s music has little to do with the expressiveness and assertive individualism of the period. Instead much of his music is shaped by a background, slow moving ‘harmonic breathing ..read more