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the sixteen, greyfriars Kirk, edinburgh

Those of us who have spent time during the Edinburgh International Festival enjoying the exploration of the outposts of the musical repertoire showcased at Greyfriars are perhaps not best placed to assess the annual impact of the Choral Pilgrimages of Harry Christophers and his choir The Sixteen.

So while this venue is in one sense an appropriate place for the 2012 tour to finish, in another the local audience is comparatively spoiled compared with other stops along the way. Nonetheless, there will have been few present familiar with all the music presented on Saturday evening. The programme The Earth Resounds gathers devotional music from 15th and 16th-century Flanders by Josquin, Brumel and Lassus and is quite astonishing in both its complexity and diversity. For myself, the discovery here was Antoine Brumel, who was represented by just two movements from his Earthquake Mass, but this Gloria and Sanctus required amazing technical ability in the overlapping lines of the 12 parts and created a cumulative effect that was quite overwhelming.

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