Ave maris stella: Marian motets by Josquin, Gombert, Willaert, Clemens and other

Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries the great composers from northern France and the Low Countries (the 'Franco-Flemish school') dominated musical life in Europe. The stars of their age, by their skill and fame they gained the most important international musical positions. As a result their poised and well-proportioned style became the musical lingua franca until the new baroque style arose in northern Italy around 1600.

In this concert De Profundis (Cambridge's all-male early music vocal ensemble) presents some of the 'greatest hits' of the most famous Netherlanders in music dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Prayers to Mary seem to have inspired these composers to their highest expressions of art and skill and some of these pieces (such as Josquin's Ave Maria and Clemens' Ego flos campi) are among the best known and best loved of the whole renaissance period.

Gramophone Award winner Edward Wickham is Artistic Director of The Clerks, whose performances and recordings of Franco-Flemish polyphony have earned it an international reputation. Edward is also Director of Music at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where amongst other things he has founded the UK's first and only college-based children's choirs for girls.