The legendary Tallis Scholars present an evening of spiritual luminescence, from Allegri’s Miserere to Tallis’s O Nata Lux.

‘The inspiration for this programme was light, as refracted in the image of the planets turning and returning in space. According to Pythagoras this turning generated a kind of mathematical music, which, although we cannot hear it, encouraged renaissance composers to use it as a founding principle for their sonorities. This often led them to texts and textures to do with light.

All the music makes reference to celestial light, from writing which turns on itself (the Josquin and Palestrina Agnus dei canons), to music which is scored luminously high (the Whyte, Taverner and Allegri), to pieces which use light in their titles (Isaac’s archangels may be included here). Nico Muhly’s Rough Notes, written for us in 2018, refers to the night sky in the Antarctic. We hope you will lose yourself in wonder at the magic of the spheres, as hymned in this sequence of beautiful pieces.’ Peter Phillips