A quick round-up of some pieces in the Chandos Singers’ latest concert in mid-December.
We (in fact mostly the men) sang a mediæval Gloria. (I’ll fill in the composer’s name when I’m in the same place as the programme). I rarely perform music this early, and there were some rather startling sounds in it (including a leap of one voice of an augmented 4th to make an augmented triad!)
I hadn’t heard of Ingegneri (Monteverdi’s teacher); on the basis of the piece we sang, there is a lot to be rediscovered. And an evening hymn by Sheppard, who suddenly seems to be crossing my radar more frequently.
I hadn’t sung In Terra Pax by Finzi since I was a student, but it all came back easily. I still think the music which accompanies the arrival of the angels sounds like the cavalry charge in a Western!
The main work was Bach’s Magnificat, in a performance which reconstructed a 19th-century revival by Samuel Wesley. This meant inserting some of the interpolated movements from the E flat version, redistributing some solos between voices, and having a singer perform the Tonus Peregrinus counter-melody in Suscepit Israel (in which I was one of the trio).