Renaissance Sacred Music from Iberia and the New World
Church of St Peter and St Paul, Lavenham, Suffolk, CO10 9QT
Sunday 15th November 2026
CAMBRIDGE RENAISSANCE VOICES
Director, Rupert Preston Bell
Cambridge Renaissance Voices return to Suffolk for a concert of Renaissance sacred music spanning the Old World and the New.
The golden age of Iberian polyphony, when church music reached its highest forms of dramatic and spiritual expression, coincided with the expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas. Under Spain's Habsburg monarchy, music of the Spanish counter-reformation was infused with northern European influences from the Spanish Netherlands; now in turn the Spanish sent forth their own musical traditions into the New World. Conquistadores and missionaries developed a cultural as well as religious dimension to the colonial enterprise, taking out European choirbooks to the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico and central America. Among the Spanish-born composers who settled there, Hernando Franco (1532-1585) became maestro di capilla at the cathedrals of Guatemala and later Mexico City ; 50 years later his compatriot Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590–1664) was appointed cantor and subsequently maestro at Puebla cathedral, producing a vast output of motets and masses developing and refining a distinctive Spanish-American polyphonic tradition. In this concert programme, Cambridge Renaissance Voices set the New-World's growing musical tradition in dialogue with its Iberian origins, including works by the Spanish masters Victoria and Guerrero.
Director, Rupert Preston Bell
Cambridge Renaissance Voices return to Suffolk for a concert of Renaissance sacred music spanning the Old World and the New.
The golden age of Iberian polyphony, when church music reached its highest forms of dramatic and spiritual expression, coincided with the expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas. Under Spain's Habsburg monarchy, music of the Spanish counter-reformation was infused with northern European influences from the Spanish Netherlands; now in turn the Spanish sent forth their own musical traditions into the New World. Conquistadores and missionaries developed a cultural as well as religious dimension to the colonial enterprise, taking out European choirbooks to the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico and central America. Among the Spanish-born composers who settled there, Hernando Franco (1532-1585) became maestro di capilla at the cathedrals of Guatemala and later Mexico City ; 50 years later his compatriot Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590–1664) was appointed cantor and subsequently maestro at Puebla cathedral, producing a vast output of motets and masses developing and refining a distinctive Spanish-American polyphonic tradition. In this concert programme, Cambridge Renaissance Voices set the New-World's growing musical tradition in dialogue with its Iberian origins, including works by the Spanish masters Victoria and Guerrero.
Price
Ticket price
£20.00
