Sherborne Abbey Choir in Concert
Director—James Henderson
Sherborne Abbey Choir, the resident choir of sixteen boy choristers and twelve adult singers in rural Dorset’s magnificent Saxon and Benedictine Abbey, presents a programme of music by Victoria, Byrd, Palestrina, Bairstow, Wood and Stanford at Hatfield House.
Come to hear gloriously rich polyphonic a cappella music sung by one of the UK’s finest boys and adults’ choirs. Some fragments of plainchant from the Sherborne Missal (an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript missal made for use in Sherborne Abbey sometime between 1385 and 1415) surround Victoria’s sumptuous Missa O Quam Gloriosum and, in their 500th anniversary years, music by John Blitheman and Giovanni da Palestrina. Contemporary church music is represented through music by the choir’s director James Henderson alongside twentieth century favourites such as Ye choirs of new Jerusalem by Stanford.
