The 11th Summer Academy in the wonderful Praemonstratensian Abbey of Mondaye. Our main area of interest this year is the rich variety of Spanish sacred music, including the lovely Missa Ave maris stella of Victoria.

A unique opportunity to take full part in a choral service in the Chapel of King's College. The Missa Benedicta of Nicholas Ludford is a magnificent example of Tudor polyphony for 6 voices, being unusually a parody setting based on Ludford's Magnificat. The music also includes motets from the chant proper.

Composers have always been inspired by the extraordinary erotic verse of the Song of Songs which somehow found its way into the Bible and was thus preserved. We shall learn some of the settings from Italy and Spain..

Our 17th seminar in Hamburg. The Eton Choirbook is one of the principal sources for English sacred music in the late 15th century. The large-format choirbook (its pages 60 x 43 cm) is still in the library of Eton College, which was founded together with King’s College, Cambridge by Henry VI for the perpetual glory of the Virgin Mary: the manuscript reflects the Marian emphasis with several settings of Magnificat, 14 of Salve Regina and many other Marian texts, as well as Davy’s St Matthew Passion. The manuscript originally included a number of works of John Dunstable, which have been lost. The composers represented in the remaining book include John Browne, Robert Wylkynson, Cornish, Fayrfax, Hacomplaynt and others. The music is of extraordinary and unusual beauty, often scored for a very wide vocal compass from high soprano to low bass; it is characterised by great rhythmic complexity, as well as by Verse sections for smaller groupings of voices, which are written in red notation. Much of the repertoire is SATBaB, but there are pieces for 4 to 8 voices, as well as Wylkynson’s 9-voice Salve Regina and a 13-part canon by the same composer.

The 2009 Academy - the 18th - will concentrate on music by Croce and his colleagues at San Marco. The annual concert will this year take place in Chioggia where a Festival Dinner and other musical activities will celebrate one of the town's most famous sons. The ensemble Hofkapelle will perform Croce's Requiem I as a mass of requiem for the composer in San Marco, and join with the Academy to perform the 4-choir Missa Jubilate Deo in S. Maria Formosa, as well as the annual High Mass in the Basilica. Details subject to confirmation.