Mayfield XL

Mayfield XL (Extra Large) swells the Mayfield choral ranks to Biblical proportions. In 1561, Alessandro Striggio strapped the music for Ecce Beatam Lucem – his new 40-voice motet – to a donkey and toured it round Europe. This spurred Thomas Tallis to compose his own (even more impressive) 40-voice piece; the awe-inspiring Spem in Alium. In this performance, Oxford Camerata joins the Mayfield Consort to perform these XL (40)-part pieces ‘in the round’ (the manner in which they were written to be performed), as well as David Bednall’s 40- part Lux orta est iusto and a new commission by (very) young local composer Clemmie Dawson.