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LATEST CD RELEASE

'The qualities of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts have been established for many years, particularly in relation to sound-quality and agility in the improvised ornamentations. The ensemble generates a real sensation of splendour'
Early Music 2011

'HMSC: They're unbelievable!'
a recent audience member in the USA!

NEWS
A recent review in the BBC Music Magazine of our Lassus recording with the choir of St John's, Cambridge: His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts shine in this performance. Lassus thought his music equally appropriate for instruments and voice, and the ensemble shows us why. When solo, the players' clarity of gesture makes their music speak. To add dimension to lines, the Sagbutts & Cornetts alternately shadow and pull away from the vocalists whom they double.

Our recently released CD Liturgia de Pascua en el Madrid de los Austrias c. 1600 recorded with Ensemble Plus Ultra and directed by Michael Noone has been voted one of the top-ten exceptional CDs by Scherzo magazine in Spain.

'the playing is nothing short of exquisite. A breath of fresh air'
Historic Brass Society

"done with a style that is wonderful and also Good Playing! - That's the hallmark of HMSC" David Hurley - The King's Singers...
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Patron: Sir John Eliot Gardiner

His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts is a group of virtuoso wind players who specialise in playing Renaissance and Baroque music in historically appropriate styles on original instruments. The noble sound of cornetts and sackbuts was among the most versatile instrumental colours available to composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was heard in many musical contexts: in consort or in alternation with voices in the extravagant liturgy of the great Italian and Spanish churches - above all the Basilica of St Mark's in Venice; in aristocratic entertainments such as the intermedii  of northern Italy or the masques of Jacobean England; and in the ceremonial and devotional music for the courts and free cities of Lutheran Germany.

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