Sidney's Director of Music featured in Gramophone

David Skinner divides his time between choral directing, teaching and research, and is Osborn Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College. David cofounded The Cardinall’s Musick in 1989, and has also worked with many other leading early music groups in the UK including The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen and the King ’s Singers. Alamire was founded in 2005 by three friends and early music experts: David Skinner, Rob Macdonald and Steven Harrold. 

In the article David notes, "Alamire tends to operate quite differently from many other early music groups. All of our recording projects are motivated by fresh discoveries, historical events or new light on the musical sources themselves".

It was decided that the first project under the Inventa label must be "both grand and quite new". David explains how the music of Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629) has been on his radar for many years, and he sung the famous Christmas Magnificat a8 as a choral scholar in Oxford.

For the new recording not only are some of the lesser-known eight-part works introduced, but also those for 10, 12, 16 and 20 voices. All of these have freshly been edited from the various volumes of Hieronymus’s Opus musicum, all published in Hamburg, while the organ alternatim Sequences and the Missa Summa are heavily reliant on Klaus Beckmann’s edition of 2002 published by Schott.

David notes, "With 10 instrumentalists and 16 singers this is by far the largest scale project we ever attempted, and, for an independent label, extremely expensive. (Like William Byrd did in his time, we rely heavily on the generosity of our patrons!)"

You can read all about David's exciting project on the Gramophone website.