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Karl-Ernst Schröder was born in Eschweiler, Germany in 1958. He studied Renaissance guitar and lute with Professor Tadashi Sasaki at the Aachen Musikhochschule, attending masterclasses with Anthony Bailes and afterwards continuing his training in early music performance at Switzerland's Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in the lute classes of Eugen M Dombois and Hopkinson Smith. He collaborated with many Baroque and Renaissance ensembles including Mala Punica (Pedro Memelsdorff), Dolcissimo Sospiro, the Basel Consort, various groups associated with René Jacobs, the Badinierie Ensemble, the Lyra Consort, Concerto Köln, the Freiburg Barockorchester, Aurora/Enrico Gatti, Ludwig-Senfl-Ensemble (Michel Piguet), Sonatori Gelosi and Ensemble 415 (Chiara Banchini)...

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When The Sixteen embarked upon their recording career back in 1982, few would have been able to predict quite how successful they would become, or how far they would go towards rehabilitating the little-known and barely recorded music of these four master composers of the sixteenth century.

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"On the death of Anne of Brittany, her husband King Louis XII honoured her with exceptional funeral ceremonies lasting forty days, which sealed forever her image as Queen of France and Duchess of Brittany. As he prepared this programme centring on the Missa pro defunctis of Antoine de Févin, and read the exceptionally vivid narrative by the herald of Anne of Brittany (whom her subjects nicknamed simply ‘Bretaigne’!), Denis Raisin Dadre realised that beyond all this official mourning staged by the royal authority, there was also a silent sorrow, that of the Bretons who had lost their duchess and were also in the process of losing their duchy’s independence. "

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"Née en 1461 et morte en 1522, durant sa vie elle connut quatre rois: Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII et François Ier. On l'appelait aussi "Madame la Grant" parce qu'elle assura par deux fois la régence du royaume de France, lors de la minórité de son frère, le futur Charles VIII, de 1483 à 1491, et lors de l'absence du roi pendant la première guerre d'Italie, en 1494 - 1495."

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This album contains Christmas-related songs of old Transylvanian collections, like Cantionale Catholicum (1676) or Kájoni Codex (1634-1671)....

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Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (Italian pronunciation: 15 May 1567 (baptized) – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer. Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the heritage of Renaissance polyphony and the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque. Monteverdi wrote one of the earliest operas, L'Orfeo, an innovative work that is still regularly performed. He was recognized as an innovative composer and enjoyed considerable fame in his lifetime.

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Giovanni Bassano (c. 1558 – summer 1617?) was an Italian Venetian School composer and cornettist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was a key figure in the development of the instrumental ensemble at St. Mark's basilica, and left a detailed book on instrumental ornamentation, which is a rich resource for research in contemporary performance practice. It is not known if he was related to Antonio Bassano a member of a well-known Venetian family of musicians...

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Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in 1548 in Avila, the birthplace of St Teresa. Just as she seems to personify the religious ethos of sixteenth-century Spain (the good side of it, at least), so Victoria came to embody the best of the Spanish character in music. As a youth he learnt his art as a chorister at the Cathedral of Avila. So promising was he that he was sent to Rome at seventeen years of age, patronised by Philip II and by the Church, to study at the Jesuits’ Collegium Germanicum...

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