The Sixteen are on the road again, with their annual Choral Pilgrimage. Last year the theme encompassed the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, that covert (or not-so-covert) Catholic who flourished in the reign of Elizabeth I and even under her patronage. I wonder what her chief minister, William Cecil – who probably did more than anyone to try and stamp out Catholicism in England – would make of the fact that the choir, whose 2024 lineup is made up almost entirely of continental Catholic composers, operates under the patronage of his descendant the Marquess of Salisbury.
“Masters of Imitation” takes as its theme the art of parody – which is to say, as Harry Christophers explains, “when the material is borrowed or reworked from another motet or chanson, sacred or secular, either by the composer or by someone else”, but in a good way. The 16th-century master of the effect was the Franco-Flemish Orlande de Lassus (c.1532-1594), around whom the programme is constructed. Katie Bank’s notes are so good that I wouldn’t have objected to the concert starting 15 minutes late while we all read them in silence.
It opens with a haunting plainsong rendition of Psalm 147: Lauda Jerusalem Dominum, and grows from there. The whole thing is dominated by Lassus, but in a thoroughly welcome sense. The harmonies of his Osculetur me – a setting of the sensual opening verses of Song of Songs – dart about as the music rises and falls in volume and intensity. It is followed by a love poem set by Maddalena Casulana; she flourished in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, but relatively little is known about her. Morir non può il mio core seems to lift a little in every line: an ascending, harmonised scale of the heart.
Lassus’s eight-part Credo from his Missa Osculetur Me – based on the motet – comes next. It is particularly good to hear, because these days the creed tends to be the poor cousin of the other movements of the ordinary of the Mass. Rarely sung liturgically, possibly as a concession to people’s impatience to get home for lunch, it contains more theology in one place than any of the other parts put together, as profound as they themselves may also be.
Cascading polyphony marks descendit de caelis, as if cherubim and seraphim were falling over each other to pull the clouds aside and catch a glimpse of the condescension of God for the human race: et incarnatus est. A hemiolaic effect accompanies et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum – a dance of the Last Day – and harks back to the closing lines of the original motet: “we will be glad and rejoice”.
Benedicta es caelorum Regina by Josquin Desprez (c.1450-1521) is a glorious wall of sound imploring Our Lady’s prayers for her Son’s ransomed people, but with some bizarre theology such as the medieval period frequently produced before being regulated more earnestly after the Council of Trent. Not-terribly-subtle descending lines hammer the message home: “est ex te Verbum incarnatum”.
The first half closes with Lassus, again: first another love song that echoes Casulana’s, Cantai, or piango. It sounds very much like one of his religious motets; composers often flitted between secular and sacred as required, and Lassus was particularly versatile. It’s only in the last verse that it becomes obviously a piece with eyes on earth rather than heaven: “sweet is the root of my bitterness”.
Love of a profoundly different kind runs through Lauda Jerusalem Dominum – the same words with which the concert opens. Soaring melodies rise like incense; dance-like, dashing here and there, sometimes the lines are so playful that it seems as though the singers are adding their own ornaments just for fun. He paints words like no other: the suspensions and resolutions of sustinebit are deliberately drawn out, while Israel wanders all over the place, poignantly and prophetically, before finally coming to rest.
The less-well-known Jean Guyot de Châtelet (1522-88) opens the second half. His version of Benedicta es is gentler then the Josquin, but with false relations providing bite and the parts tumbling around each other in perfect order as they work up to a solid climax at Gabriel’s Ave, gratia plena in the middle and then again to an enormous, final Amen.
Marian themes continue with Lassus’s sublime and languorous to-and-fro Salve Regina – as if he couldn’t decide to whom to give the best parts – and his Magnificat on Benedicta Es. The latter takes off at breathtaking pace, setting the scene for the rest – phrases running hither and thither and later bouncing up and down as the rich are discombobulated all over the place, and sent empty away.
It’s not a gripe, but the alternatim plainsong verses are so well executed that I almost longed for a bit of roughness – perhaps some wheezy canons in the retrochoir, coughing their way badly through the neumes in their fur-trimmed almuces. The original rendering in draughty medieval churches must have emphasised the difference between the chant and Lassus’s exquisite counterpoint even more.
Both pieces sandwich another short Casulana love song, Vagh’ amorosi augelli, before the concert comes to a close with a grand and unexpected finale: Lauda Jerusalem Dominum by Bob Chilcott, born in 1955 and very much still with us. It’s exactly what we’d expect from Chilcott: rich tonal harmonies, shifting colour palettes, breaking of traditional compositional rules and repeating freeform effects over a solid cantus firmus.
It is very much in the spirit of his predecessors, and fits the theme perfectly. It’s intricate but reassuring – not too-clever-by-half as some modern music can be – calm, and clearly based on old forms recast for our own times. It’s an immensely impressive end to the programme, full of vim and vigour but in a way unlike anything that precedes it. There is a war-cry feel to the closing Alleluias; the end is utterly refreshing, and a total surprise.
I can never quite work out how Christophers coaches such a youthful tone out of his choir. It is totally disarming when set against his singers’ experience and professionalism, and the quality of their voices. I have known some of them for years; they were my contemporaries when I was haunting organ lofts and choir stalls as a student. And yet, there it is: a freshness of sound that no-one else quite manages.
The Sixteen celebrates its 45th anniversary this year, and evidently its members intend to continue doing what they do best: bringing phenomenal music to audiences up and down the country and wowing them with their versatility and sheer talent. Once again they’re showcasing some of the finest music ever written, which you’d be hard pushed to hear anywhere else. They’re crisscrossing the UK until November: go, and tell them I sent you.
www.thesixteen.com
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