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Grande Liturgie Orthodoxe Slave by Choer Bulare Svetoslav Obretenov
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Album Favorite

"Whenever I listen to this I find myself quite overwhelmed by it. There was an interest in the '70s in that Bulgarian folk singing, the kind of singing where they sing in 2nds. One of the harmonies they use a lot is a 2nd, which is a very unusual interval, and I remember that being around and there being a great album called Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, which is an amazing record, so I think I was aware that that part of the world had interesting music. I don't really remember how I got this one other than I bought it in France. The softness of the male voices is like softly blown flutes. If you grow up in England with the disgusting operatic tradition we have, where the men's voices have to be so manly, it makes you violently ill [laughs]. Hearing the softness of this was so touching to me. There's one section in one of these tracks that is too amazing, where the voices that are all woven together gradually separate out so that all the voices above a certain register keep on going higher and higher and the ones below keep going lower. It ends with this incredible chasm between the voices that is just startling."

Source
  
The Virgin Elizabeth: A Novel
The Virgin Elizabeth: A Novel
Robin Maxwell | 2012 | Fiction & Poetry, History & Politics, Romance
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
41 of 250
Book
Virgin
By Robin Maxwell

Once read a review will be written via Smashbomb and link posted in comments

 
...a riveting portrait of Elizabeth I as a romantic and

vulnerable teenager, dangerously awakening to a perilous

liaison with the wrong man.

England, 1547: King Henry is dead. Elizabeth's half-brother, nine-year-old Edward, is king in name only. Thomas Seymour, brother to the ambitious duke who has seized power in this time of crisis, calculatingly works his way into Elizabeth's home in genteel Chelsea House. He marries Henry's widow, Catherine Parr, and uses his venerable charms and sexual magnetism to indulge his infatuation for young Elizabeth. Caught hopelessly under Thomas Seymour's spell, surrounded by kind friends and hidden enemies, Elizabeth can only follow her heart to ensure survival.



I’m fascinated by the Tudors and our English history and I love historical fiction so this was right up my street! Robin Maxwell certainly knows how to spin a tail! Elizabeth is definitely one of my favourite royals and to have an insight of her young life after already overcoming the embarrassment of her mother’s demise then this scandal truly shows why she remained unmarried and one of the longest strongest rulers!!