Chetham’s Lunchtime Concerts
Carole Nash HallTake a lunch break and enjoy this free recital by some of the UK’s most exciting young musicians! Discover the...
The Marian Consort explores powerful, heartfelt music from Renaissance England alongside songs of plea and protest from the folk tradition.
William Byrd was a devout Catholic who, like his friend and mentor Thomas Tallis, made his religious convictions clear in his use of texts, a potentially dangerous strategy in Protestant Elizabethan England. Even more incendiary is Byrd’s setting of Henry Walpole’s Why do I use my paper, ink and pen, a poem commemorating the martyrdom of Edmund Campion which speaks truth to power in a manner similar to these early English ballads, many of which have their origins in far more ancient folk songs, stories and uprisings.
Photo: Nick Rutter
