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This mass setting is almost totally unknown today because unlike Fayrfax’s other masses it does not survive in a complete vocal version. The editor has reconstructed it from a variety of Jacobean sources—a single vocal partbook, a lute arrangement, and some vocal extracts—and has recomposed the 80% of the highest voice that has been lost. In doing so he has revealed a fascinating work: Fayrfax’s only four-voice mass, written in a lively and ingratiating style that rarely occurs in his other music. Technically it is distinctly challenging: very ornate and full of short-note syncopation. The choice of a cantus firmus from the feast of St Catherine suggests that the setting refers to one of the marriages of Catherine of Aragon, either the first to Prince Arthur in 1501 or the second to Henry VIII in 1509; the editor would stake his groats on the latter. For four voices: TrATB. ix + 34 pages. 2025. ISMN 979-0-57039-221-6.
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