Program 1. Tomas Luis de Victoria - JesuDulcisMemoria 2. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - SicutCervus 3. Thomas Tallis - If Ye Love Me 4.

Tomas Luis de Victoria - O Magnum Mysterium 5. Gregorian Chant - JesuDulcisMemoria 6. William Byrd - Ave Verum Corpus 7. John Sheppard - In Manus Tuas 8. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - MissaBrevis - Kyrie 9. John Dowland - Fine Knacks for Ladies 10. Henry VIII - Pastime with Good Company PROGRAM AND ORDER SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Introduction
The Shepherds Ensemble is a Shanghai-based amateur choir with members from various backgrounds. Independently founded in late 2007 by early music amateurs, the Shepherds takes renaissance choral music as its core repertoire. The Shepherds sings in both sacred and secular venues, giving at least two concerts each year in Shanghai. It has performed various Renaissance masterpieces of great composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Tomas Luis de Victoria, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Orlando di Lasso, and Gregorio Allegri. In 2010, it won the Silver IV prize of Musica Sacra in the Open Competition of the 6th World Choir Games. Through its concerts and events, this young and ambitious ensemble has successfully established itself as a unique vocal group of early music and is making efforts to popularize Historically Informed Performance in China.

Renaissance Music
Renaissance music is music written in Europe during the Renaissance (approximately 1400-1600). As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments that define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of ancient Greece and Rome; increased innovation, scientific inquiry, and the discovery of the New World; the growth of commercial enterprise; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school. The development of printing made distribution of music possible on a wide scale. Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of the bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the

unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style which culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Palestrina (Italian), Lassus (Franco-Flemish), and William Byrd (English). Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals, allowed the training of hundreds of singers and composers. These musicians were highly sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers and teachers. By the end of the 16th century, Italy had absorbed the northern influences, with Venice, Rome, and other cities being centers of musical activity, reversing the northward flow of influence of a hundred years earlier. Opera arose at this time in Florence as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the drama and music of ancient Greece. Music, increasingly freed from medieval constraints in range, rhythm, harmony, form, and notation, became a vehicle for personal expression. Composers found ways to make music expressive of the meaning of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa. Popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists. Music for the first time became self-sufficient, existing for its own sake. Many familiar instruments, including the violin, the guitar, and keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord, were born during the Renaissance. During the 15th century the sound of full triads became common, and towards the end of the 16th century the system of church modes began to break down entirely, giving way to the functional tonality which was to dominate western art music for the next three centuries. Both secular and sacred music of the Renaissance era survive in large quantity, both vocal and instrumental. An enormous diversity of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance, and can be heard on commercial recordings and web-radio stations today, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, and many others. Numerous early music ensembles specializing in music of the period give concert tours and make recordings, and the Early Music revival has begun to have significant influence and growing audiences in China over the past two decades.