Verus is a new label and download resource dedicated to preserving our musical heritage by restoring and reissuing classic and sought after audio recordings from the last hundred years as well as releasing new recordings of compositions that are not well served by existing audio catalogues.

Michael Howard: A Choral Pioneer

Our first release is Michael Howard: A Choral Pioneer. This features renovations of stereo recordings made in 1958 by Michael Howard for the Argo label in the late fifties at Ely and Arundel Cathedrals. The Arundel recording, Music for the Common of Apostles (plainsong and Palestrina's Missa Aterna Christi Munera) were made with The Renaissance Singers, whom Howard had founded more than a decade earlier. The Ely recording, Music for the Feast of Christmas, combined this group with choir of Ely Cathedral and features Howard's then-assistant Arthur Wills who went on to succeed him as Organist and Director of Music.

Click here to purchase this CD using Google Checkout
or
Click here to purchase this CD using PayPal merchant services

"Stunning in impact" - Peter Giles (in The Counter Tenor)
"Spendid singing" - The Musical Times
"Very compelling...and very influential" - Bruno Turner
"[The Ely choristers] show themselves, both in tone and flexibility, the equals of any comparable group in the country; above all they have a vitality in attack which English choirboys too often seem to lose in the quest for a specious purity of tone" - Gramophone

Audio extracts (all 256 kbps .mp3 files)
Resonet in Laudibus - Iacob Handl
Vox in Rama (plainsong mode vii)
Agnus Dei - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

A great deal of care has been taken with the renovation of these recordings. The original master tapes have been de-noised and the recordings re-reverberated, using measurements taken especially for this reissue, in the buildings that the recordings were made. The result is pristine audio quality in which these performances have never before been heard. Sleeve notes are by Bruno Turner and Michael Howard. This is a limited edition release - some copies are still available for purchase by clicking on the links above. Please email info[-at-]verusrecords.com for further information.

Arundel Cathedral interior
(the microphones used to measure the acoustic signature for this reissue can just be made out at the end of the central aisle)