joy · sorrow · song

Allegri Miserere, Howells Requiem

Debussy, Strauss and the Venetian School

Tuesday 30 October 2007 at 7.30 pm

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

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A wide-ranging programme of unaccompanied choral music, contrasting larger-scale works of mourning and supplication with more private madrigals and songs, in expressions of both sorrow and joy. The centerpieces of the concert will be Gregorio Allegri's celebrated Miserere for nine voices, composed in the 1630s, and Herbert Howells' haunting Requiem for unaccompanied mixed two-part chorus, completed in 1936 but shelved following the tragic death of Howells' only son and not published until 1980.

In the first half of the concert, Allegri's Miserere is preceded by earlier Venetian School madrigals by Adrian Willaert, Andrea Gabrieli and Cipriano de Rore, and Giovanni Gabrieli's joyous motet Jubilate Deo (Oh be Joyful in the Lord). In the second half, Howells' Requiem is framed by Claude Debussy's Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orléans of 1908 - three songs with texts by 15th-century prince and poet Charles d'Orléans - and Richard Strauss's uplifting and rarely performed Die Göttin im Putzzimmer (The Goddess in the Boudoir) of 1935.

Conductor: Nicholas Jenkins