Pellingmans' Saraband • Twenty Waies Upon The Bels (CD)

In all music there is a fine balance and interaction between predictability and surprise, repetition and variation, familiarity and novelty. Some music inclines more in one direction, and some in the other. But throughout musical history runs a thread of "circular music", music based entirely on a repeated pattern of some sort, whether that pattern be a repeated melodic line around which is woven other material, a repeated harmonic progression on which melodic variation is improvised or composed, or an entirely circular canon – i.e. a round which returns to the beginning when it reaches the end.

Pellingmans' Saraband explore three main areas of circular music: firstly, divisions on grounds (i.e., variations on repeated harmonic progressions); secondly, with guest singers, songs which have grounds as their accompaniments; thirdly, canons and rounds, again with guest singers, by composers such as Thomas Ravenscroft. All of these types of circular music are represented on their album Twenty Waies Upon the Bels.

Music by Thomas Robinson, John Johnson, Thomas Ravenscroft, Thomas Campion, Robert Smith, Nicholas Lanier and more.

Jacob Heringman lutes
Susanna Pell viols

with
Faye Newton soprano
Edd Ingham tenor
Giles Lewin baritone
Christopher O'Gorman tenor
John Potter tenor

PS002 • Released 2016