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In April and May, The Tallis Scholars premiered sun-centered, a work commissioned to share a program with Antoine Brumel’s monumental Missa “Et ecce terræ motus” — a Renaissance mass for 12 voices that gets its name from a scrap of chant whose text means ‘and the earth moved.’

Lang describes the connection:

This scrap of text immediately reminded me of Galileo’s trial for the blasphemy of proving the Earth revolves around the Sun, which seemed to contradict the Bible. After his conviction he is supposed to have muttered under his breath ‘E pur si muove’ – and yet it moves. The connection between the two texts got me thinking about the movement of the earth, about the pricelessness of human knowledge, and about the perils of rejecting it. Why is it that we are so resistant to new ideas that challenge the ones we already know?