TONUS PEREGRINUS

TONUS PEREGRINUS is a group of individual musicians each forging their own diverse careers, yet unified when they meet to make music from many times and places. The ensemble was founded by the composer and producer Antony Pitts in 1990, while studying at New College, Oxford under Dr Edward Higginbottom. The Latin term tonus peregrinus was the name given to one of the Church’s ancient psalm tones; in turn, this chant was based on a Jewish melody which may have been sung by Jesus and the disciples at the Last Supper. This particular psalm tone was unusual in that it had a different recitation tone in each half, hence its name, ‘wandering tone’; it was also known, despite its history, as the tonus novissimus, or the ‘newest tone’. TONUS PEREGRINUS combines these two characteristics in a repertoire that ranges far and wide from the end of the Dark Ages to scores fresh from the printer, and with an interpretative approach that is both authentic and original.

It was a recording of Antony Pitts’s sacred choral music, Seven Letters (now available on Hyperion and Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, August 2005) that led Klaus Heymann to commission the ensemble’s first two recordings for Naxos: Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Naxos 8.555860), which hit the top of the BBC Music Magazine chart and won a Cannes Classical Award in 2004, and a pairing of the earliest complete polyphonic Mass and Passion settings The Mass of Tournai (Naxos 8.555861). Klaus Heymann also commissioned the ensemble’s director to make new arrangements of 24 carols for Advent and Christmas: The Naxos Book of Carols, available both as a CD (Naxos 8.557330) and as a carol-book published jointly by Faber Music and Select Music.

Other Naxos releases by TONUS PEREGRINUS is of organum by Léonin and Pérotin, Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340), Sweet Harmony – masses & motets by John Dunstable (Naxos 8.557341), the first-ever opera Le Jeu de Robin et Marion by Adam de la Halle (Naxos 8.557337), and Hymnes and Songs of the Church (Naxos 8.557681).

For further information, please visit www.tonusperegrinus.co.uk.

Albums featuring this artist are available for download from ClassicsOnline.com

Role: Choir
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