Programme: Vivanco Sicut lilium Palestrina Sicut lilium II Nico Muhly Marrow Lassus Vinum bonum Lassus Missa Vinum bonum Nico Muhly A Glorious Creature de Rore Descendi in hortum meum Dunstable Descendi in hortum meum Palestrina Descendi in hortum meum Vivanco Magnificat Octavi toni (a 8) Performers: The Tallis Scholars Peter Phillips conductor The multi-award-winning choral ensemble, globally acclaimed, performs a programme formed around how nature beautifies our lives, from the sun in the sky to the flowers that grow in our gardens. By extension, we include the grapes that make the vinum bonum we enjoy. The title is taken from a substantial new setting of words by Thomas Traherne, commissioned by The Tallis Scholars from Nico Muhly. Some of these pieces (like de Rore’s Descendi in hortum meum) involve canon which is the musical equivalent of the kind of artifice we may associate with horticulture. To draw both strands together we end with a grandly canonic setting of the Magnificat by the Spanish master Sebastián de Vivanco whose setting of a text from the Song of Songs opens the performance.