Summer Festival of Sacred Music at St. Bart's Continues 8/5

The Summer Festival of Sacred Music at St. Bart's continues on Sunday, August 5 at 11 am with a service featuring Josquin's Missa Pange Lingua. Josquin des Prez (c. 1450-1521) is regarded to be the central figure in the Franco-Flemish school and the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal composition.

He served as music director for the chapel of the Duke of Ferrara in Italy and the collegiate church of Notre Dame in Condé-sur-l'Escaut on the border between France and Belgium near his birthplace. His Missa Pange Lingua, based on the famous plainsong hymn Pange Lingua gloriosi by Thomas Aquinas, is Josquin's last mass composed around 1515. It is considered to be one of the finest examples of a "paraphrase" mass, in which an elaborated version of a cantus firmus, usually a plainsong hymn, is used as thematic material for the mass.

This event is the first in a series of four Summer Festival services in August to feature the music of the greatest masters of the Renaissance including works by Josquin, Taverner, Lassus and Palestrina.

St. Bartholomew's Choir will be conducted by William K. Trafka.