There is Sweet Music

A celebration of the English choral tradition

Tuesday 31 July 2007 at 19:30

St Mary le Bow, Cheapside, London, EC2V 6AU

See the flyer / See the programme

On 31st July 2007, Londinium, performed an exciting concert of a-capella vocal music which celebrated the English choral tradition through the work of William Byrd, Edward Elgar, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten.

In the first half of the programme, Byrd's Latin Mass for five voices (1594-5) was interspersed with two motets from Byrd's Cantiones Sacrae of 1591. The second half of the programme featured two unaccompanied choral pieces from the mid-twentieth century: Tippett's Plebs Angelica of 1943 and Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia of 1942.

The concert, in the 150th anniversary year of Elgar's birth, was rounded off with three of Elgar's part-songs for unaccompanied mixed-voice choir: two of the four part-songs Op. 53 of 1907 (Deep in my Soul, O Wild West Wind) and his Angelus (Op. 56) of 1909.

The celebration of music and singing is a theme which runs throughout the programme, from the opening and closing Byrd motets with their references to voices and instruments, to Britten's ode to St Cecilia, patron saint of music.

Conductor: Madeleine Lovell