The Great Service
BBC Midland Chorus
Conductor, James Denny
Venite: Te Deum ; Benedictus
To be continued at 6.40

Byrd's 'Great' Service takes its place among the most splendid achievements of English church music. It is due to Canon Fellowes, who has done more for Tudor music than any other man, that the work is available to us; he it was who discovered the larger part of the text at Durham Cathedral. The alto part for the Evening Canticles was subsequently found at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Canon Fellowes transcribed the work for practical use, reconstructing the missing passages himself; and it was performed in its entirety, for the first time for two and a half centuries, at Newcastle Cathedral in 1924.