The latest album from celebrated vocal ensemble Solomon's Knot is our featured album for April 2024 – an exciting exploration of the music of 17th Century British composer George Jeffreys. Hot on the heels of their acclaimed album of Bach Motets (a previous featured album at The Early Music Shop), this time the group have turned their attention to a much less familiar composer. The precision and care demonstrated by Solomon's Knot and their artistic director Jonathan Sells is exemplary, and the deluxe 2CD edition from Prospero Classical comes with a 52-page booklet and download codes for the lossless audio files. Read on to find out more...

Lost Majesty
Sacred Songs & Anthems by George Jeffreys
Solomon's Knot

OUR FEATURED ALBUM FOR APRIL 2024

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This 2CD recording features the complete English vocal works for four and five voices with continuo by George Jeffreys, showing him to be the forgotten composer of the English 17th century. This one-time organist to Charles I fused the Italian madrigal with English church music, creating a unique style and bringing the baroque to British shores.

This is the second of a series of location-specific Solomon’s Knot recording projects. It was made at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, where George Jeffreys lived and worked for the Hatton family. Thanks to the kind permission of English Heritage, and the generous donations of so many of our supporters, we have the great pleasure of bringing his music back into the light.

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Why The Early Music Shop loves "Lost Majesty":

This beautifully recorded, executed and presented 2CD set gathers together the complete English vocal works for four and five voices with continuo by George Jeffreys (c. 1610–1685), a largely forgotten English composer of the generation before Purcell. With this exceptional recording from the baroque collective Solomon’s Knot, one senses that Jeffreys’s neglect will become a thing of the past. To be sure his music is not completely unknown – for example, composer and conductor Peter Aston was a pioneering advocate for Jeffrey’s music in performance and recording – but this present CD takes our appreciation of Jeffreys to a new level. This one-time organist to Charles I fills the musical void between such towering figures as Byrd and Purcell in the history of English music: in Jeffreys’s unique voice we can hear a fusion between the then new Italian styles and English church music, creating a fresh, often harmonically adventurous style.

This CD set is the second of a series of location-specific Solomon’s Knot recording projects. It was made at Kirby Hall, near Corby in Northamptonshire, one of England’s finest Elizabethan manor houses, though now partially ruined, where Jeffreys lived and worked as Steward for the Hatton family. Evocative photographs of the ruined portions (and the resident peacocks) adorn the accompanying booklet.

The 16 pieces on this set offers a generous range of what Jeffreys’ music is about. Unexpected harmonic twists abound; nuanced word-painting is a constant delight, not least in a paraphrase on Psalm 20, The Lord in thy adversity; and the personal In the midst of life, a funeral text set by Jeffreys during his own life-threatening illness, is one of the most boldly inventive settings of a text more familiar in Purcell’s later setting.

Curiosity killed the cat, goes the familiar saying; but curiosity about this music in this very special recording from Solomon’s Knot will pay – and repay – unexpected dividends.

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Lost Majesty is available now from The Early Music Shop online or in our Snape Maltings showroom.

Click here to order now!

Watch the documentary video below to find out more about the album: