Dramatic scenes in the Old Testament and the Gospels inspired some of the greatest art of the seventeenth century, in music as well as in the visual arts. This concert brings together vivid settings of Biblical scenes by English seventeenth-century composers and their great German contemporary Heinrich Schütz. It will include William Byrd’s Easter anthem ‘Christ rising again’ and his consort song ‘Susanna fair’, telling the story of Susanna and the elders; two famous anthems by Orlando Gibbons, ‘This is the record of John’ and ‘See, see the word is incarnate’; and Matthew Locke’s anthem ‘When the son of man shall come in his glory’, a dramatic setting of the parable of the sheep and the goats from St Matthew’s Gospel.

The main work by Schütz is his poignant short oratorio Die sieben Worte Christe am Kreuz (The Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross) SWV478, written in about 1645, though the programme also includes his Annunciation Dialogue SWV333, published in 1639, and the beautiful motet that ends the Musikalische Exequien (1636) SWV281, in which the choir with viols and organ sings the German Nunc Dimittis while three solo voices placed at a distance reply with words from Revelation, ‘Selig sind die Toten die in dem Herren sterben’ (‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord’).

This concert showcases the talents of Psalmody, now established as one of East Anglia’s leading chamber choirs, and a group of viol players mostly drawn from Essex Baroque Orchestra, the Festival’s other resident ensemble. The two groups collaborated in a very successful concert of Jacobean music during the 2005 Festival. Claire Tomlin was a founder member of Psalmody while still a student, and has gone on to appear as a soloist at every subsequent festival, and in concert halls throughout Britain and abroad.