David Allinson
" Iam delighted to be returning to Lincoln to lead a course for Run by Singers. In honour of the place, and the time of year, I have devised a contrasting menu of music. "We will celebrate musical talents connected within Lincoln and its county – William Byrd, surely the greatest musician ever to work at the Cathedral; John Taverner, much associated with Boston; and Robert Parsons, key influence upon Byrd, who lived and worked in Lincolnshire and whose death by drowning in the swollen River Trent at Newark gifted Byrd a place in the Chapel Royal.
"We will sing two beautiful pieces from later in Byrd’s life: the elegiac Retire my soul and the fervent Optimam partam elegit. From Taverner we have a haunting Audivi vocem and an intriguing Ave Maria. But the spotlight falls especially on Parsons, who is today known almost exclusively for his honeyed Ave Maria, which was included in my RBS programme for Lincoln in 2021. His music is of such high quality, and so little known, that it will be a pleasure to explore with you his searingly dramatic Latin pieces for Holy Week, and his sweet, mellow Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for the Church of England."
"For the other half of the programme I have gathered a bouquet of motets for the Virgin Mary. The Feast of the Assumption falls on 15 August, and that is that perfect premise for us to explore hymns of praise and settings of the Song of Songs by superb composers including Isaac, Guerrero and Victoria. Here’s to a week of light and shade, in the lee of Lincoln Cathedral, the building John Ruskin called ‘the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles’." – David Allinson