Thames Concerts 2018/19 - Morning Series: The Lovekyn Consort

Thames Concerts is delighted to welcome the Lovekyn Consort to give the last in this series' Farmers' Market Day morning concerts at St Andrew's Church. The concert starts at 10.30am and lasts for around 50 minutes, without interval.

‘Rival empires’ - Renaissance music from England and Spain

The Lovekyn Consort perform quintessentially English songs and tunes from the Elizabethan stage and tavern, together with tales of battles, love and loss from Imperial Spain. In 1588, the English fleet won a resounding victory against their longterm rival. Spain had established its empire at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and England wanted to establish its own trading networks and military power at sea. England was an expanding power tilting at a much greater one, and Spain had incorporated cultural influences from Jewish and Muslim cultures and was now absorbing elements of South American culture.

The Lovekyn Consort will perform music from the formative period of Spain’s expansion - from the end of the fifteenth century to the first third of the sixteenth, together with songs and tunes from the burgeoning English stage and its developing civic culture - from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Spain had forcibly integrated its minorities before expanding abroad, absorbing some aspects of their cultures into a national style, whereas English music some times assumed a style borrowed from one of its neighbours. In the middle of these developing empires were the naval ‘Armada' battles of the 1580s, and we will mark these with ballads and tunes from both sides. The Lovekyn Consort play instruments of the type originally used for their music.