Join the Bartholomew Consort under the direction of JanJoost van Elburg as we offer a short concert programme of wonderfully reflective music, including composers Harris, Byrd, Tallis, Lauridsen, Gibbons and Parsons.
After a short pause for preparation the music continues with an evening Compline service replacing the usual 6.30 Taizé service .
Lucy Walker’s beautiful Compline service music is based on original plainchant and was commissioned by St Martin’s Voices in 2023. In offering this choral service the Bartholomew Consort thanks St Michael and All Angels for allowing us to perform frequently in the church over the last 25 years.
St Barnabas Church, Jericho OX2 6BG Sunday November 3 at 4 pm
Tickets at TicketsOxford from early September, full price £15, students, unwaged, jobseekers, disabled £9. Children under 12 free
Programme
Frank Martin (1890 -1974) Mass for Double Choir
Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968)
Missa di Requiem
James MacMillan (b.1959) Lux Aeterna
Musical Director JanJoost van Elburg
In this programme for unaccompanied voices , the two larger
works, share some points of details:
both were composed in 1922 and both were the only unaccompanied choral works
of their composers on liturgical texts.
For Martin, his Mass for Double Choir was a deeply felt and personal
work, which he did not release for performance for forty years. His background
was in the Calvinist church, his father being a minister, and this coloured his
entire life and the characteristic of his creative work. The Mass was written
and put away, protected for decades by Martin’s fervently held belief was that
it was almost a blasphemy to perform such an intimate and private dialogue between
God and himself. His work is entirely
his own, embracing the innovative ideas of the early twentieth century.
Pizzetti’s Requiem, on the other hand, is soundly based on the
ideas of Gregorian chant and the fifteenth and sixteenth century Italian
masters of polyphony. He introduces some vernacular flourishes by frequently changing
the number of voice parts within a section, echoing the improvised folk-singing
of his native north Italy. It is not
certain that Pizzetti held as strong a faith as that of Martin, but the spiritual
intensity is just as strong.
The third, shorter, work in this programme is a communion
motet by the prolific and hugely admired James MacMillan, published just ten
years ago, Lux Aeterna.
